I'm Glad I Don't Fly Much

With the TSA thing dying down in the media, I have to say I am glad I don't have to fly very much.

But the debate, as sensationalized as it was, brought up some interesting points.

"Flying is a privilege, if you don't like the security, don't take a plane." I suppose this is true. I can always drive 2500 miles to visit my mom. Or I can take a train.

Except that trains are next. The TSA is already talking about upping security on trains.
Trains are already targets in Europe - though I don't think they have TSA type security for trains yet over there. (do they?)

We are hearing about the backscatter technology being put into mobile vans that can cruise up and down the road and look into our cars.

Of course "driving is a privilege, not a right."

But then, that same van-mounted backscatter imagery technology can look at people walking the same way it can look at you at the airport.

"But we are only looking for terrorists."
OK, so I have nothing to fear from the government peering through my car, or through my clothes, as I am on a public street. Or nothing to fear from them "just checking" through the walls of my house. What happens when my innocent and legal possession of, say, a firearm is indistinguishable from what a "terrorist" would look like? Do they stop and question me? Is it now up to me to prove that my legal act is, indeed, legal? Would I have to now mount an expensive legal defense to establish this point?

Flying is a privilege, not a right.
Again, that argument allows a steady slicing away of the means of travel until travel itself becomes a privilege. We might all be safer if we had internal passports, and government checkpoints at the approaches to major cities. (We might not as well.) But "terror" is about creating fear in the hope of causing us to change our policies. (That is another story.) If it gets to that point, then the terror is probably winning.

Here is the core problem for me.
There are no boundaries.
And unbounded government power will always grow until it hits a boundary.
If that boundary is the patience of the people, social unrest results.
And that is exactly what the terrorists are trying to do.
The government is doing exactly what the terrorists are trying to get it to do.
The terrorists are pulling the strings here, and the government is falling for it.