AIRPORT SECURITY DICTATED BY THE LA-LA LAND OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

To you TSA screeners: Better think twice! That tampon string dangling from a young Muslim woman’s vagina might just be a fuse.

PC AIRPORT SAFETY IS AN OXYMORON
By Arnold Ahlert

Jewish World Review
December 27, 2010

I'm going to try to explain this one more time, because I think it is critically important. Freedom doesn't die all at once. It gets chipped away, piece by piece, until what we once had becomes unrecognizable. On December 22nd in Austin, Texas, 56-year-old Claire Hirschkind suffered the kind of indignity that is only possible in a society that is morally confused and, as a result, Constitutionally uninformed. When she refused to have her breasts groped by a TSA agent at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, she was arrested. As infuriating as that is, it pales by comparison to the statements of two other travelers. "I understand her side of it, and their side as well, but it is for our protection so I have no problems with it," said one. "It's unfortunate that that happened and she didn't get to fly home, but it makes me feel a little safer," said another.

Memo to the clueless duo: what's going on at airports around the nation is not, repeat not, for the protection of the flying public. This odious system is set up to protect one thing and one thing only: political correctness. In this particular incarnation of PC, it is the willful and calculated determination to ignore the reality that virtually all terrorist acts are committed by radical Muslim males between the ages of 17 and 45.

If that were the extent of it, it would be problematic enough. But it is precisely the same PC which countenances that radicalization in American mosques, madrassas, prisons and on college campuses, even as those who point out such realities are labeled "Islamophobic." It is the same PC which erodes the common sense and common decency of a public becoming "accustomed" to getting scanned and groped by government strangers in order to "feel a little safer."

Feel a little safer? Here's a reality check for the feelers: "A person briefed on the latest tests tells ABC News the (TSA) failure rate approaches 70 percent at some major airports. Two weeks ago, TSA's new director said every test gun, bomb part or knife got past screeners at some airports." Got that? Seven-out-of-ten components which could be used to blow up a jetliner--or allow it to be hijacked and turned into a 9/11-like missile--got past the technology and the bureaucratic gropers.

So much for feelings--one would think.

And there, in a nutshell, is the enduring attractiveness of political correctness. One need not think at all. Ever. One needs only to have feelings in order to move un-Constitutional mountains. And not even a particularly large palette of feelings. In fact, all that is necessary is to punch one's admission ticket into the la-la land of political correctness, is one feeling expressed in two words:

I'm offended.

Thus, the truly successful airport security system used by the Israelis, the one which focuses on potential bombers instead of bombs, will never be embraced by America, because it will "offend" someone. Better to thoroughly offend women like Claire Hirschkind who wears a pacemaker-like device and says she is a former rape victim. Better to toss her to the ground, handcuff her, and drag her twenty-five yards across the airport terminal floor because she had the temerity to think her Constitutional rights were being violated, when she drew the line at having her breasts groped. Better to humiliate people in actuality in order to protect the theory of offended-ness that forms the foundation of political correctness.

Once again, for the terminally offended, along with those who think feeling is a viable substitute for thinking: the ultimate destination of the cancer known as political correctness is totalitarianism. It is the dissolution of rights and freedom sold under the banner of protecting people from being offended. It is the suppression of everything deemed hurtful or hateful by those in positions of power in the media, academia and government who prefer a populace cowed into an offense-free acquiescence of "proper" feelings. It is the Orwellian attempt to pack human nature into a sausage casing of conformity and docility, and if such runs counter to reality, reality be damned.

Claire Hirschkind is an American patriot, whether she knows it or not. She is the embodiment of the nearly-extinct American ethos of "don't tread on me," which so many Americans have willfully surrendered for their "protection," even as that protection is revealed for the seven-out-of-ten fraud it truly is. She is the antithesis of those who have been gulled into believing that airports are now "Constitution-free" zones--lest someone be offended.

"Our officers are trained to treat all passengers with dignity and respect. Security is not optional," said a TSA statement released Wednesday night. Tell me, my fellow Americans, the "dignified' and "respectful" ways one submits to having their private body parts groped. Explain how security isn't "optional" when "every test gun, bomb part or knife got past screeners at some airports." Tell me why you prefer that Claire Hirschkind and other Americans be humiliated to prevent admitting that Islamic terrorists are the over-riding problem. Explain to me the utter schizophrenia of a government which simultaneously embraces totalitarianism at our airports and a free-for-all on our southern border.

Ms. Hirschkind, I hope you get a chance to read this column. I suspect right now you could use the support of Americans who empathize with your determination not to go quietly into the night. There are more of us than you might imagine. People unwilling to submit to thuggery sold as protection. People who refuse to substitute emotions and whining for reason and logic. People who are genuinely offended by those who use being offended like a club in order to beat our democratic republic into submission.

You are not alone.