It is Thanksgiving Day in The United States and the hot topic remains the Transportation Security Administration. As an ardent defender of the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment, I’ve dedicated a lot of time and space to attacking the TSA the last few weeks. Today, however, I want to put the TSA issue in perspective.
My travels have taken me all over the world the last few years and I have witnessed some extremely harrowing scenes, among them:
- Young boys and girls digging through garbage for food in rural India
- Rubble and disenchantment in the West Bank
- Extreme idleness and unemployment in Johannesburg
- Political oppression in Moscow
- Intense poverty in Cairo
It puts the whole TSA issue in perspective…
I don’t want to make this a "I love America" post, but the fact is "we" Americans have it pretty good. Sure, unemployment is high, we’re engaged in two wars, our currency is sinking, and the federal government seems to "solve" our fiscal woes by simply printing more money, yet our biggest concern this week has not been cholera outbreaks, deadly flooding or stampedes, blatant political corruption, or starvation. Instead, we’re complaining about the screening we have to endure when we travel by air–a luxury much of the world can only dream about.
And as I pointed out earlier this week, politicians are listening to our complaints and the TSA is not shielded completely from the public will–like most matters of public concern in America, if there is enough pushback the Department of Homeland Security will be forced to alter policy. Contrary to the practice in many nations, government officials like TSA Administrator John Pistole have been forced to publicly and repeatedly defend government policy rather than simply telling the people to go pound sand.
I’ll be back on my anti-TSA bandwagon tomorrow, but let’s use today to take a step back and give thanks that the TSA is our (at least my) most pressing concern.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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