Order this writing in the collection book Hope & Creation available for only 1495 |
|
This appears in a pre-2010 issue
|
||
|
John Yotko
I was listening to the radio this morning on my way to work and I heard Terry O’Brien mention that the Transportation Safety Administration wanted to start collecting information about passenger meal selection. The first thing I thought, ‘for what purpose do they need this information?’ Then I thought, ‘what right have they to this information?’
She then said that they were probably using it to study the behavior of passengers to determine if they may be terrorists. Terry noted that they have computer logarithms (Jake suggested that she meant algorithm) that they can put this data through to profile the passengers to see if they may be a terrorist threat. Jake joked that the ACLU will probably get all up in arms over this one. Her own state of Illinois agrees that racial profiling is a crime. Meanwhile the TSA has taken to settling profiling cases out of court rather than facing a decision by the Supreme Court that this is unconstitutional. Immediately I was trying to dial the radio station but I couldn’t get through. While I was trying to dial, she said that people do not have a right to fly, that it is a privilege. When did it become a privilege for a private individual to enter into a contract with a corporation for transportation? The day the “Patriot” Act passed, that is when. Don’t worry, your rights aren’t evaporating.
I thought about the references that I hear from many of the socialists, communists and liberals that I know about President George W. Bush being a Fascist. What is fascism? It is a political philosophy that glorifies the state (there is a very good description of Fascism at