In Case You Missed It: TSA Pat Downs Another 'Parent of Despotism'

Truth be Told by Carla Harper Wednesday, November 24, 2010 WASHINGTON -- Nov. 24, 2010 -- The terrorists win again as Americans line up like sheep at airports to be "virtually" disrobed in high-tech X-ray machines or physically assaulted by government representatives. It's all in the name of safety - being treated like a criminal at the airport, telling farmers how to grow crops or giving kids a "fat" report card. Implementing more and more "safety" measures is not about safety. It's all more steps toward eroding our freedoms and making us pliable under a paternal, domineering government.   The Constitutional role of keeping citizens safe has been twisted into a real Gordian knot. A government that will implement screening measures that assault the very core of personal freedom but at the same time refuses to secure our borders is hard to take serious. Thomas Jefferson warned against assuming the government would vigilantly protect our rights saying "that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism." George Washington once said, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence - it is a force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Expressing need for the people to never stop watching those in charge Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Papers, No. 25 wrote, "For it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those whom they entertain the least suspicion." Janet Napolitano illustrated well why we must remain a bit suspicious and think for ourselves at a press conference last week when she said, "Everybody has a role to play" in preventing terrorism "and if people don't want to play that role, if they want to travel by some other means, of course that's their right." It's a false choice she presents. Basically her message is either be a team player and give up your dignity and freedom at the airport or take the bus - all in the name of safety. Does she really believe that terrorists won't think to blow up a bus or train? Will we be surprised when after a terrorist blows up a bus with a bomb in some orifice that suddenly "playing our role" entails a thorough pat down before boarding any form of public transportation? Power concentrated in the hands of the wrong people is dangerous to freedom. Whether or not the current administration is as successful at a methodical and maniacal pursuit of monstrous government as Woodrow Wilson with his creation of the ever progressing income tax, Federal Reserve, Federal Trade Commission and blatant racism or Richard Nixon with his paranoia, wage and price controls, abolition of the gold standard and creation of the EPA only history will tell.  The visceral gut reaction normal Americans have toward the new airport "procedures" in the name of safety is correct as are reactions to supposed health care reform, the Dream Act, the Food Safety Modernization Act and everything else the government dreams up to undermine the God given right and responsibility to first take care of ourselves and family and then to help those in need around us. The founders understood that the government is made up of fallible, fragile men and women who, again in the words of Thomas Jefferson, must be bound "down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." Those who believe that the Constitution is out dated and that the American fetish for freedom in the form of self governance as built into that sacred document is passé don't want us to know the truth about our own history or the eons of world history the founders studied to build the foundation for what as of yet is the greatest nation on earth.  Read Dust-up over pat-downs not keeping travelers on ground at the Washington Times. Technical and creative writer, Carla G. Harper follows current events with one eye on history and one eye on the future.  Her goal is to encourage people to think critically about what's going on, both around them and in their lives. Follow Carla at Twitter: CarlaGHarper The Frederick Douglass Foundation is a public policy and educational organization which brings the sanctity of free market and limited government ideas to bear on the hardest problems facing our nation. We are a collection of pro-active individuals committed to developing innovative and new approaches to today's problems with the assistance of elected officials, scholars from universities and colleges and community activists. For more information, visit www.TFDF.org.