Mr. self-described "Libertarian" Tucker Carlson wants the US government to know the religion of its citizens.
Last night, after returning from a thoroughly BLISSED-OUT trip to Alaska, while also recovering from a red-eye that missed the security changes by merely a hair....I watched Tucker's analysis of the new airport security measures.
He was pissed at the inconvenience and called for religious profiling.
His guest allowed as how offensive that would be, but Carlson stated that having the government know our religion is a small price to pay for keeping Americans flying conveniently.
Carlson appeared overly concerned that the increased security measures would harm the US economy, which, he stated, is very dependent on rapid easy travel by the business class. (I hasten to add that he himself probably travels often with merely a carry-on).
He interviewed a travel writer who always gets stopped due to his one-way ticket and no checked baggage, stating that the government should KNOW that this man was a travel writer and therefore not a terrorist.
While conceding that it would be offensive, he stated that people should be asked their religion as a part of a security screen. THere was no follow-up discussion on how many people would simply lie to get through faster, or how effective it would be.
So what is his angle?
Does he simply wish to reduce the inconvenience to himself and his buisiness-class buddies at the expense of national security?
Does he have a latent anti-Muslim bias that is finding an outlet?
I don't know about any of these, but I suspect the following:
He may believe that the government should have access to our religious activities through the channels of domestic spying. Invisible, unknown, and unseen, people like himself have little chance of being inconvenienced by the fruits of domestic spying measures. In fact, when the TSA knows immediately who he is and what he does he probably thinks he can immediately go to the front of any line.
To hell with the Constitution.
An Aside: I must say, I agreed with him on one thing: our homeland security measures are extremely reactionary. They are responding to threats in process rather than anticipating new ones. It's very lumbering, and I say it's pretty lucky we have the Brits on our side to catch the bad guys. All the NSA spying and so forth that have come to light seem to be like using a drift net to catch terrorists. They might get lucky, but they also infringe upon the rights of too many Americans.