The controversy surrounding the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) and its use of porno scanners, pat-downs and
feel-ups has split the conservative movement into two camps. It’s
the authority-loving cons versus the liberty-loving
cons.
I’m firmly in the
latter camp, along with Mark
Hyman,
George Will, Charles
Murray, and most grassroots conservative
bloggers. And we’ve welcomed into our ranks recently,
The American Spectator’s esteemed
editor-in-chief, R.
Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
This is not surprising, of course. Mr. Tyrrell, after all,
is a practicably-minded conservative, not a rigid and inflexible
left-wing ideologue.
And so, when he is presented with the facts about the TSA
— which are that it is utterly useless and ineffective at finding
and stopping terrorists — he does what any reasonable and
sober-minded person must do: He admits that we must disband the TSA
and start over.
We must develop a screening system that actually works and
is effective — and which inconveniences the terrorists rather than
the patriotic flying public.
Mr. Tyrrell also is a devotee of liberty who cherishes
human freedom and human creativity. Thus he realizes that the porno
scanners, the pat-downs, and the feel-ups are an
affront to human decency and to human liberty. And so, like most
liberty-loving cons he recoils at these sickening acts and demands
that we do better.
Unfortunately, not all conservatives agree. Indeed, there
are a group of conservatives for whom their blind faith in
authority outweighs their love of liberty. I call these
conservatives the “authority-loving cons.”
Authority-loving cons see the TSA as they want it to be;
liberty-loving cons see the TSA as it really is. Authority-loving
cons include
Max Boot,
Gabriel Schoenfeld, Linda
Chavez, Marc
Thiessen, and Danielle
Pletka — all of whom have argued for the
TSA because…
Well, the TSA promises to keep us safe! And what TSA
bureaucrats are doing can only help to keep the terrorists at bay!
The porno scanners, the pat-downs and the feel-ups all give us
“another
line of defense,” says Boot.
Liberty-loving cons who complain about the TSA are a bunch
of whiners. They need to just suck it up, say authority-loving
cons. They need to realize, as does Boot, that “body scanners and
pat-downs are…part of the price of safety in this age of Islamist
terrorism.”
All of which begs the fundamental questions: Do these
so-called security measure actually work? Do they keep us safe?
Have they stopped and detected terrorists? Is there a better
way?
The answer to these questions are all very clear: No, no,
no and yes, respectively. Yet, authority-loving cons persist in
their willful self-delusion. “This is about keeping us safer,”
insists Pletka. “And if it deters the next attack, I am for
it.”
There they go again! Assuming that which is demonstrably
false.
Ronald Reagan once said that facts are stubborn things.
But not, apparently, to authority-loving cons. For them, dreams —
pipe dreams — are stubborn things. They are things (or ideas) that
will never die. The TSA, though, needs to die; and Congress needs
to start over.
The Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole has proposed a better
way: Employ a
risk-based screening system that “focus[es]
TSA resources on the travelers who should receive the most
scrutiny.” And newsflash for the TSA bureaucrats: 80-year-old
grandmothers from Cedar Rapids, Iowa aren’t worth your time and
attention; 25-year-old Muslim students from Somalia are.
America can and must do better — and so, too, should
authority-loving cons.
