The American Spectator

br> — Rick Arand br> Lee’s Summit, Missouri /p>

“The Belgians are — in the words of a retired Air Force officer who shall remain nameless — ‘French wannabes. Can you imagine such a low form of life?’”

On behalf of my 82 year old [Flemish] Belgian war bride mother, I suggest Mr. Babbin has failed to affirm one of the most fundamental human associations, to wit, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Mr. Leterme was expressing his fundamental disgust with Francophone Belgians, which makes Mr. Leterme an enemy of our enemy, and hence our friend. Lighten up, Mr. Babbin, and try a Stella Artois, you’ll be grateful!

Regarding profiling, where is the hand wringing when youthful males are crucified by automobile insurance companies, regardless of their driving record? Where is the rending of garments when men are charged higher life insurance premiums because of their regrettable tendency to leave this earth for their eternal reward or damnation sooner than their better halves? On the other hand, when those same better halves are charged higher disability insurance premiums for living “too long”, there is a Pamplona-like stampede of Attorneys General to argue against the “unconstitutionality” of the hopelessly undeniable actuarial statistics.

Bottom line, the Left’s most sacred commandment, chiseled into stone at the time of the French Revolution, is “everybody or nobody,” also known as uncompromising egalitarianism. No winners, no losers, as Winston Churchill once noted, “an equal distribution of misery.” The commandment “everybody or nobody” applies to every earthly activity, airline passenger screening merely being the topic-du-jour. The Left understands that a chink in the armor of “everybody or nobody” when it comes to airline passenger screening might also imply a more rational Social Security or Medicare. It would also fly in the face of socialized medicine, for which Hillary planned to enforce the “everybody or nobody” commandment by criminalizing fee-for-service care.

p>Mr. Babbin and the rest of us will not get rational airline passenger screening until a majority of Americans has lost a relative to a readily identifiable group of people who are blindly permitted to exploit the “everybody or nobody” commandment. As horrific as 9/11 here and 7/7 there was, too many Americans continue to subscribe to “everybody or nobody” for Congress to recognize any need for action. br> — Frank Natoli br> Newton, New Jersey /p> p> One of the “typical Belgian” things about Mr. Yves Leterme, the premier of the Flemish region, is that his name is obviously French. Perhaps that is the cause of “hardness of heart.” br> —