Trading Freedom for Security

“The feudal system was one of hierarchy in which nobles, who were sovereign over the most valuable commodity of that time—land—ruled over peasants (serfs) who were tied permanently to the land.” – Feudalism at Encyclopedia.com

“Serfdom was the enforced labour of serfs on the fields of landowners, in return for protection and the right to work on their leased fields.” – Serfdom at Wikipedia

Serfs in the Middle Ages traded freedom for security.  In return for protection by the landlord, a serf worked a parcel of land and was legally bound to the land.  One can understand why serfs centuries ago made that trade—they were born into servitude and didn’t have a tradition of liberty as we do in the US.  What’s difficult to understand is why today you can see many Americans making the same trade.

"If it’s in the interest of safety, it’s alright." - Air traveler the day before Thanksgiving.

Different Rules for Serfs and Their Rulers

“With respect to the TSA, let me, first of all, make a confession. I don't go through security checks to get on planes these days, so I haven't personally experienced some of the procedures that have been put in place by TSA.”  - President Obama speaking at a NATO summit[1]

TSA procedures aren’t intended for our rulers—they’re a different class of people.  At a NATO summit, President Obama acknowledged that he has not had to be virtually strip-searched or groped by TSA goons.  But the President wants us to understand that it’s important that we be groped or virtually strip-searched in the “land of the free.”  According to Obama, it’s for our own good.

Our rulers travel in style and would not allow themselves to be treated as serfs.  When asked if she would submit to a pat-down, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (D) replied:

“Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?”[2]

John Boehner (R), soon-t0-be second in the line of succession to the Presidency, pretends to be a man of the people by flying commercial airlines, yet he bypasses security screens that we cannot.[3]  The TSA identified other rulers exempt from airport screening:

“Cabinet secretaries, top congressional leaders and an exclusive group of senior U.S. officials are exempt from toughened new airport screening procedures when they fly commercially with government-approved federal security details.”[4]

Gropes and peeping under clothing at airports are for the little people.  They’re for:

• 61-year old Thomas Sawyer, a retired special education teacher and bladder cancer survivor, who wears a urostomy bag, and was humiliated and covered in urine after his TSA pat down.[5]
• Cathy Bossi, a breast cancer survivor, forced to remove her prosthetic breast and show it to a TSA screener after the screener felt her prosthetic breast.[6]
• The little boy in this video, who is frisked by a TSA agent.
• Grand Rapids air traveler Ella Swift, reduced to tears when a TSA screener ran a hand up her crotch because she was wearing a skirt.[7]
• Business traveler Penny Moroney, who considered the patting of her genitals by a TSA screener to be a sexual assault.[8]
• A 23-year old woman from Amarillo, Texas who had her top pulled down by TSA agent to expose her breasts in 2008.[9]
• Menstruating women with suspicious material lining their panties (aka panty liners) necessitating additional groping.[10]

TSA screeners in the “land of the free” poke and prod Americans as if they were examining slaves at a slave auction.[11]

Why do “free” Americans let them?

Serfdom Not Security

“But at this point, TSA, in consultation with our counterterrorism experts, have indicated to me that the procedures that they've been putting in place are the only ones right now that they consider to be effective against the kind of threat that we saw in the Christmas Day bombing.” - President Obama[12]

Obama and his family won’t go through the sexual assaults or privacy invasions that you and your family must endure.  Our constitutional law professor President tells us we must tolerate these invasions of our Fourth Amendment right to be secure in our persons while he jets off in Air Force One to yet another meeting of the G8 or a global warming conference, or the royal family takes a vacation trip to India.[13]

Pilots and flight attendants complained about being groped at airports and the TSA backed down.  Yet even as the federal government makes exceptions, the TSA still assumes it can violate our Fourth Amendment rights with impunity.  Why does that assumption go unchallenged? 

Despite what the President wants us to think, being treated like slaves will not keep us safe.  Acting like serfs brings serfdom, not security.

____________________________

[1] “Text of President Obama,” AP, (Accessed at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101120/ap_on_re_eu/eu_obama_summit_text_1 on Nov 21, 2010).

[2] “'I'd avoid them if I could': Hillary Clinton joins row over 'intimate' TSA airport pat-downs,” By Daily Mail Reporter, 22nd November 2010, (Accessed at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331781/Hillary-Clinton-joins-intimate-TSA-pat-downs-row-Id-avoid-I-could.html on Nov 29, 2010).

[3] “No Security Pat-Downs for Boehner,” By Jeff Zelany, Nov 19, 2010, NY Times, (Accessed at http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/no-security-pat-downs-for-boehner/?partner=rss&emc=rss on Nov 24, 2010).

[4] “TSA: Some gov't officials to skip airport security,” By EILEEN SULLIVAN, AP News, Nov 23, 2010, (Accessed at http://apnews.myway.com/article/20101124/D9JM7I381.html on Nov 28, 2010).

[5] “TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine,” By Harriet Baskas, MSNBC.com, 11/20/2010, (Accessed at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40291856/ns/travel-news on Nov 21, 2010).

[6] “Cancer surviving flight attendant forced to remove prosthetic breast during pat-down,” By Molly Grantham, Nov 19, 2010, WBTV, (Accessed at http://www.wbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13534628 on Nov 21, 2010).

[7] “Enhanced pat down leaves Grand Rapids airline passenger in tears,” by Phil Dawson and Christa Graban, 11/19/2010, Wzzm13.com, (Accessed at http://www.wzzm13.com/news/news_story.aspx?storyid=140233&catid=14 on Nov 21, 2010).

[8] “Woman says her Lambert security screening was sexual assault,” kmov.com, Nov 18, 2010, (Accessed at  http://www.kmov.com/news/mobile/Woman-says-her-Lambert-security-screening-was-sexual-assault--109114934.html on Nov 21, 2010).

[9] “Airport staff 'exposed woman's breasts, laughed',” The Australian, November 18, 2010, (Accessed at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/news/airport-staff-exposed-womans-breasts-laughed/story-e6frg8ro-1225955345734 on Nov 21, 2010).

[10] “Sanitary Towel Prompts TSA To Grope Sexual Assault Victim,” Steve Watson, Prisonplanet.com, Nov 25th, 2010, (Accessed at http://www.prisonplanet.com/sanitary-towel-prompts-tsa-to-grope-sexual-assault-victim.html on Nov 28, 2010).

[11] This gives more testimony to Jeffrey Rogers Hummel’s thesis in Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men.

[12] Text Of President Obama, Ibid.

[13] “Bomb-proof tunnel with air conditioning: Obama's security go to extraordinary measures for his tour of the Gandhi museum,” Daily Mail, Nov 6, 2010, (Accessed at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1326962/Obamas-India-visit-security-erect-bomb-proof-tunnel-Gandhi-museum.html on Nov 21, 2010).

What?  The Obamas weren’t vacationing in India?  Was the President helping outsource more jobs there instead?

Doublethink (Part 7)

“For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”

Nineteen Eighty-Four  Part 2 Chapter 9, p. 156-7 by George Orwell.[1]

Ignorance is Strength

Applied to innovation, “Ignorance is Strength” might describe a physicist working relentlessly to prove the existence of some marvel previously considered impossible.  If you’re the physicist, your “ignorance” is a good thing for you, your refusal to accept conventional wisdom is your strength. 

Applied to the state, “Ignorance is Strength” means the strength of the rulers depends upon the ignorance of their subjects.  In that case, unless you’re a ruler, your ignorance hurts you.

Our rulers want us to believe that democracy is a special form of government where they work for us.  Our rulers would have us all believe that in a democracy the will of the people—whatever that is—prevails.  That belief is the “ignorance” part.

“This Time It’s Different…No Really, We Mean It”

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor and House Republican Leader John Boehner

"This is not a time for compromise, and I can tell you that we will not compromise on our principles." – House Minority Leader and Soon-to-be Speaker of the House John Boehner (R), Oct. 27, 2010 on the Sean Hannity show (audio)

“The people have spoken” once again after the November 2, 2010 elections.  Rs picked up at least 60 seats in the US House and six in the US Senate.  Those elected and the media tout this overwhelming victory for Rs a result of voter backlash against D-supported growth of the federal government that permeates our lives.

Born two summers ago of voter outrage over healthcare “re-form,” the tea party movement grew after Ds forced Obamacare down the throats of voters last year.  The tea party made Obamacare and the failure of the $787 billion Recovery Act of 2009 the main issues of this election.  Tea party voters believe they can limit the growth of the federal government by forcing it to follow the US Constitution.

Playing to the voter anger and pro-Constitution sentiment reflected by the tea party movement, the opposition party in Congress released “A Pledge to America” on September 23, 2010.[2]  Full of pretty pictures and emotional paeans to liberty, family values, and national defense, the R-pledge (pdf) also pays lip service to the Constitution:

“We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers and honor the original intent of those precepts that have been consistently ignored – particularly the Tenth Amendment, which grants that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” – Page 3 of “A Pledge to America”

The party that in the last decade gave America two undeclared wars, the TSA, a $1.2 trillion Medicare Prescription Drug bill, and the $700 billion TARP banker bailout finally pledges to honor the Constitution.  Finally.  Do you believe it?

Prepare to get milked

Even a casual study of recent history shows that democracy simply means that the cows get to pick who milks them.  The state makes sure that any bulls in the herd supply prairie oysters instead of milk.

Angry voters this election opposed socialist Obamacare, but apparently forgot that Rs sponsored the socialist $1.2 trillion Medicare Prescription Drug bill and the $700 billion TARP banker bailout.  John Boehner (R) just won re-election this year in Ohio with 66% of the vote.  Ohio voters must have forgotten that Boehner voted aye for the $1.2 trillion Medicare Prescription Drug bill and voted yea for the $700 billion TARP bailout (video) during the Bush (R) administration.  They must have forgotten that John Boehner, the same guy they just re-elected, voted yea for the Bush-sponsored creation of the TSA—the monstrosity that peers under clothes and gropes the crotches of “free Americans” to keep them safe.

Now Boehner, who will soon be Speaker of the House, says Rs “will not compromise” on their principles:

“Our plan stands on the principles of smaller, more accountable government; economic freedom; lower taxes; fiscal responsibility; protecting life, American values, and the Constitution; and providing for a robust national defense.” – Page 5 of “A Pledge to America”

Where were Boehner’s “limited government principles” in 2008?  Or did he just grow them?

Soon-to-be House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R) of Virginia was re-elected with 59% of the vote.  If this election was a repudiation of big government, how did Cantor, who voted for the $1.2 trillion Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act of 2003, for the $700 billion TARP banker bailout of 2008, and for the creation of the TSA monstrosity, get re-elected? 

After the election, TARP-supporter and “limited government advocate” Cantor unveiled 22 pages of hypocrisy (pdf) in his campaign to become the House R-majority leader:

“I don’t think any of us ran for Congress with the idea that we could finally provide a subsidy to this industry or that, or to this community or that. Or that we would vote to continue the same federal programs and agencies that are failing our citizens and bankrupting our children and grandchildren.”[3]

One of the writers of “A Pledge to America,” congressman Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin, ranking member of the Committee on the Budget, knows federal government spending is unsustainable.[4]  Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” advocates “re-form” of Social Security and Medicare.  Days before the 2010 election, Ryan argued for changes to Social Security and Medicare: 

“The government's own experts are telling us that our health and retirement security programs -- Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- are on a path to bankruptcy unless we take action soon. In addition to overwhelming the entire federal budget, the collapse of these programs will result in painful cuts for seniors and society's most vulnerable.” – Paul Ryan, Oct 16, 2010

Yet during the Bush (R) administration Ryan voted aye for the $1.2 trillion Medicare Prescription Drug bill, moving Medicare that much more toward the bankruptcy he is now so alarmed about.  Ryan himself contributed to “overwhelming the entire federal budget” when he voted for the $700 billion TARP banker bailout.  Ryan also proved he is no friend of the Constitution when he voted for the creation of the TSA monstrosity which violates the Fourth Amendment rights of all travelers to be “secure in their persons…against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

In this election of voter outrage, Ryan was re-elected this year by a wide margin with 68% of the vote.

Rs touted this election as a repudiation of big government.  If that is so, how did these three leading members of the opposition party, who supported and voted for big government when an R was President, get re-elected in 2010?

The cows have made their choices.

End the Government Takeover of Healthcare

“We offer a plan to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care with common sense solutions focused on lowering costs and protecting American jobs.” – Page 6 of “A Pledge to America”

In 1965 the federal government started its takeover of healthcare with the Social Security Act of 1965 under LBJ (D).  By 2003 both Rs and Ds saw government socialized healthcare as a right for Americans: the Bush (R) administration pushed legislation to pay for Medicare Prescription Drugs that will cost an estimated $1.2 trillion through 2016.[5]

The federal government has unfunded liabilities of $200 trillion.[6]  Most of those liabilities are for Medicare and Social Security.  Nowhere in their Pledge to America (pdf) do Rs mention ending  Medicare.[7]  Rs pretend they’re the party of fiscal responsibility and that they follow the Constitution, yet they lie to themselves and the American people just as easily as the Ds.

End TARP Once And For All

“Americans are rightly outraged at the bailouts of businesses and entities that force responsible taxpayers to subsidize irresponsible behavior. We will cancel the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a move that would save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.” – Page 21 of “A Pledge to America”

Like exterminators releasing pests in a home to drum up business, the Rs who voted for TARP now pledge to cancel it.

This year’s crop of the fruits of democracy yields legislators who supported the $152 billion Bush-Economic Stimulus Act and the $700 billion TARP banker bailout in 2008, but not Obama’s $787 billion Stimulus bill in 2009; who support socialist Medicare, which is bankrupting the federal government, but not socialist Obamacare, which will bankrupt the federal government.  All of these federal government programs encroach on your freedom, but double-thinking voters pretend there’s a difference between the programs.  That same double-thinking lets voters pretend that this time a difference exists between the Rs or Ds who create the programs.  (Much like double-thinking Obama supporters pretended they were voting for a change from warmonger George W. Bush.)

This election was different—at least that’s what they tell you.  The Tea Party is spontaneous they say—or it was until it was preempted by politicians.  The people are angry and will change things they say—deep down you should know better.  Rs or Ds in the US, black cats or white cats in Canada (see six minute Mouseland video [8]), there’s no real difference.

Your ignorance is their strength.  Moo.

_______________________________

[1] Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, New American Library, N.Y., 1949, pp. 156-7.

[2] “House Republicans Unveil 'Pledge to America,' Call for Tax and Spending Cuts,” September 23, 2010, FoxNews.com, (Accessed at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/23/house-republicans-unveil-pledge-america-tax-spending-cuts/ on Nov. 2, 2010).

Read a Pledge to America (pdf) and remember Rs voted for the bailout (HR 1424) during the Bush (R) administration.

[3] “Eric Cantor lays out 22-page game plan,” By Jake Sherman, 11/3/10, (Accessed at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44641.html on Nov. 4, 2010).

Another snippet from Cantor’s plan:

“We came to Washington to eliminate the deficit, to tear down barriers to job creation, and to reform a government that has grown out of touch with the governed.”

[4] “Republicans unveil Pledge to America, but where was Paul Ryan?” By Linda Feldmann, Christian Science Monitor, September 23, 2010, (Accessed at http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Election-2010/2010/0923/Republicans-unveil-Pledge-to-America-but-where-was-Paul-Ryan on Nov. 2, 2010).

[5] “Medicare Drug Benefit May Cost $1.2 Trillion,” By Ceci Connolly and Mike Allen, Washington Post, Feb 9, 2005, (Accessed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9328-2005Feb8.html on Nov 9, 2010).

[6] “U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It,” By Laurence Kotlikoff, Aug 10, 2010, Bloomberg Opinion, (Accessed at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html on Nov 9, 2010).

[7] From Page 6 of “A Pledge to America”:

“Of course, Americans remember that President Obama argued his government takeover of health care was the single most important thing we could do to address our growing debt crisis. This notion has since been thoroughly discredited: we now know the new health care law will mean more financial pain for seniors, families, and the
federal government. We offer a plan to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care with common
sense solutions focused on lowering costs and protecting American jobs. We will enact real medical liability reform; allow Americans to purchase health coverage across state lines; empower small businesses with greater purchasing power; and create new incentives to save for future health needs. We will protect the doctor-patient relationship, and
ensure that those with pre-existing conditions gain access to the coverage they need. We will permanently end taxpayer funding of abortion and codify the Hyde Amendment.”

[8] In the video, the lone mouse on the pipe is really a cat in a mouse suit.