In which we finally DO complain...

The recent groundswell of dissatisfaction with the intrusive airport security measures visited upon ordinary Americans bade me to wonder what the late William F. Buckley, Jr. would have thought of it all.  Many years ago Buckley wrote an essay entitled "Why Don't We Complain?" in which he lamented the apathy with which most Americans supinely accept the ever-increasing incursions upon their freedom and autonomy by the government.

It would, of course, have been seen as quite impolitic had Buckley publicly expressed his chagrin at any of the enhanced security measures which were hastily enacted in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.  But with the benefit of nine years experience and hindsight it is readily apparent that the basic approach to airport security, in which everyone is treates as equally suspicious, is simply the gesture of a bloated government which lacks the will to put your safety ahead of the totem of political correctness.

Any measure of security requires us to relinquish some of our personal liberty.  In many cases that's a fully acceptable trade-off; I am quite content to be disallowed to stroll blithely into the Pentagon carrying a concealed weapon because the odds are quite overwhelming that someone less trustworthy than little ol' me could try the same thing with malicious intent and purpose.  But the requirement that each and every passenger - even a nun in her habit, an infant, a grandmother in a wheelchair - all must submit to a full body scan or an invasive patdown - either of which is a gross affront to modesty - is sheer politically correct cowardice, required because the government is afraid to admit the truth.

We need only look at the practices which Israeil uses to see that these invasive measures need not be applied to every man, woman, and child that attempts to board an airplane.  The elephant in the room is "profiling", which we durst not even consider.  But every single attempted act of terrorism using airplanes against the United States has been perpetrated by indivduals who fit a certain "profile" - and I'm not speaking only of appearance or national origin.  Israel has lived under a constant threat from the same enemies who have now begun to target America and it has successfully protected it's air travelers through the use of intelligent screening and... "profiling"!

Perhaps enough finally is enough.  The Tea Party movement, which is a true grassroots American phenomenon, grew out of Americans' frustration at the erosion of their liberties at the hands of an ever-more intrusive and overreaching government.  I think the recent spate of airport security incidents is a manifestation of the same sort, representing a further awakening by Americans to the dangers posed by our government's aproach to governing.  William F. Buckley would no doubt be pleased by this turn of events and might note that we've finally started to complain!

Ironically, even after the results of the recent election and the MSM's coverage of the airport security controversy, the Obama administration still doesn't seem to get it.  We heard this week that Secretary of "Homeland Security" Janet Napolitano is considering a waiver of the intrusive screening requirements for... whom?  Nuns?  Infants?  Grandmothers in wheelchairs?  Nope, Muslim women!  You can't make this stuff up, as another Buckley - WFB's son Christopher, a novelist - has said: we're living in the post-satirical age!

But don't get me wrong, I'm fine with excluding Muslim women - and Catholic women, and Jewish women, and protestant women, and Mormon women, and Buddhist women, and lots of other women - and men - too.  99% of the traveling public ought to be able to answer a few questions from a screener, keep our shoes on, pass our carry-on baggage through an x-ray machine, and walk through a metal detector.  But we ought to adopt some common-sense "profiling" of passengers which would reserve these extraordinary screening methods for those indivuduals whose circumstances raise reasonable suspicions about their trustworthiness.  Even The Boston Daily Worker (a.k.a. The Globe) permitted publication of an op-ed piece recognizing this as long ago as 2006, but of course this isn't really the paper's editorial stance.  And the majority of the left, in particular the A.C.L.U., vehemently opposes any such practices. 

So - keep complaining, America; but in the meantime prepare to be exposed, humiliated, and groped.  Unless you're wearing a hijab and burkha, in which case you will probably sail through airport security with nary a touch...

UPDATE: lest anyone think I plagiarized George Will's column in Sunday's Washington Post, be assured that I didn't read it until several hours after posting the above.  But do read it yourselves, he has some good things to say - including the pithy description of the airport screening charade as "security theater"!  Pitch perfect!