I'm having a hard time getting into high dudgeon over the TSA's latest brilliant idea. Sure the idea of mandatory body scans or crotch pats is invasive, but empirically it's not any dumber than putting your toothpaste in a baggy for the guards to look at.
What I AM in high dudgeon over is the whiplash quick pivot that the Conservative Noise Machine has made from fear of A-rabs to fear of our own government. These are the same people who thought it was okay for the guards at Gitmo to flush a Koran down the toilet and to sick dogs on the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but looking up a ladies' skirt at Teeterboro? Heaven forbid!
This is just another example of the righties not playing by their own values. Which is why I say, let's use their ultimate value, "the free market", to resolve this issue. Details after the fold.
Some of us are old enough to remember when airplane tickets came in two categories: smoking or non-smoking. What I propose today is two new categories of flights: Genitals Searched and Pre-911 Mentality.
On a GS flight, every passenger would be either scanned or patted down by their friendly TSA agent. They also will take off their shoes and belts and account for every last drop of liquid in their possession. Once in a while they will have to drink a bit of their own breast milk and suffer some other random indignity with no relation to actual security concerns. In short, they will be treated like the mindless Cattle they truly are.
On P9M flight, you would be subject to the relatively sane restrictions and procedures that were in place on 9/10/10. You keep your shoes on. You bring all the toothpaste you want, although more than 2 tubes might be grounds to have a drug dog take a whiff, now that I think about it. No one is racially profiled or ritually humiliated. Best of all, because you're saving the cost of some of this silly security apparatus, you save about 2 percent of the cost of your flight.
This 2nd category of flights is permitted based on the notion that we solved the 9/11 problem by reinforcing the door to the cockpit. And we know not to go along with any hijackers demands such as "give us control of the plane, or we'll knife a flight attendant with this box cutter."
I like this idea because it will cause Americans to choose what they really value: Security, Privacy or $11.28. Me, I will choose privacy. And I will do my best to not be annoyed by all the free-market types who join me in flight to save that $11.28 on their flight.
One thing I can pretty much promise you about my plan ....no one will get hurt.