Both I and the Constitution beg to differ.
Libertarian Joe sez: What happens when the feds pass a law saying you can't drive, swim, bike or crawl without showing ID? Eat without ID?
Don't look now, but they pretty much have already done that. A recent Supreme Court ruling upheld the government's "right" to require you to show ID upon their request. No suspicion or reasonable cause is required. Just being in public. Ihre Papieren, Bitte!
He can walk, drive, swim, bike or crawl.....just not fly.
"Travel" under our Constitution has been considered by the Supreme Court and they previously have held that the right to "travel" is a God-given right and cannot be restricted by "requiring" a Drivers License if traveling by auto, unless one is driving for commercial purposes [trucking, for hire, etc.] You are not required to have a "license" to move from point A to point B either by foot, by bicycle or automobile... at least according the Supreme's previous ruling on it.
But just try to 'splain that when the cop stops you and cites you for driving without a license. Papieren, Bitte The government will do everything to grind you down into submission to their laws, unless, like Gilmore, you are wealthy enough to just take them on- as he has.
river rat sez: I can't believe we are still screwing around with these freaking lunatics.
Actually, Gilmore isn't as much a freaking lunatic as he is one person who is fighting for your rights against the socialist left who are taking them away, more and more, each and every day.
How many times have you said, "If I was just independently wealthy and could afford to fight (this or that) all the way to the Supreme Court"? Well, Gilmore is just that and doing just that. He realizes that all this krap is just "security theatre" and has no relevance whatsoever to true "security" - none! In fact, I suspect that most people like river rat wouldn't know good security if it came up and bit them on their gluteus. But they certainly are impressed by the "theatre" put on by the government and the TSA and "Homeland Security".
It is quite simple to point out that virtually all of the 9/11 hijackers had and showed ID's. In fact, several were on the "watch" lists and had their photographs diseminated as suspected terrorists. Did a lot of good, huh?
But now, we've learned and we're tough- we've got security!!! And all it takes to shut down LAX for hours is for someone to run the wrong way on the escalator, and three terminals are shut down, planes whose passengers have already been screened aren't allowed to depart and incoming flights are held away from the unaffected terminals or are diverted. Hell, the terrorists don't even have to worry about planting a bomb or doing anything dangerous at all except buying a ticket and then running the wrong way out of the "secure" area and let the "theatre of security" kick into high gear.
Sorry, I just don't feel any safer than before 9/11 and I certainly know that I've lost many of the rights that I at least thought I had before 9/11.
In fact the last time I did fly anywhere, I watched with absolute amazement at the total uselessness of this "security theatre". I watched as an 80 y.o. couple were going through "screening". The arthritic husband had passed being wanded and humiliated, and now he was standing there watching his wife being wanded by some low IQ TSA idiot. She was wearing a jogging outfit and at her age, could barely stand steady on two legs, let alone stand on one leg unassisted and lift her leg up to have the TSA turd wand the sole of her shoe. Then when the wand kept going off over her hip area, the TSA turd couldn't seem to get it through his head that she had had a hip replacement and that was what was causing his metal detecting wand to go off. Instead he insisted on having to put his hand into her waistband to make sure she wasn't carrying some hidden nuclear device - or (horrors!!) a box cutter!
These stupid things were being done and taking place in front of a uniformed and armed soldier. The lady's husband, raised in a completely different generation of courtesy and manners for women and the elderly, was almost crying from what his wife was being subjected to. He wanted to go to her side and help steady her, but of course that is unacceptable in the "theatre of security" and Mr. TSA Authority wasn't about to use what few functioning brain cells he had to put any courtesy and empathy into the process.
With 19 hijackers all being of middle-eastern descent and looks and between 18 and 30 years of age, why were the TSA thugs hassling an 80 year old, white haired lady with a hip replacement? Believe me, it didn't make me feel any more secure! Quite the contrary.
On the same trip, I, a white haired old geezer, got pulled off for "extra screening", apparently because my drivers license was going to expire the following month- not that it was expired, but would in the future. Another example of the sheer stupidity of theatre of security. In line with me were a middle aged grandmother with a young (probably 10 y.o. grandaughter), a white, crew cut twenty something young father with his 5 y.o. son, a well groomed white twenty something young business man, a well groomed and nicely dressed twenty something white young business lady, and a 40-50 y.o. well dressed black business man. Wow, talk about your obvious high security threat profile! Ooops, we aren't supposed to use that word.
The interesting thing about all this "security" is that while waiting for boarding, I had walked over to an area on the concourse where there was a low partition separating the "secure" area on the level I was at and the "unsecure" area on the floor below that was just inside the entry doors for the general public. I could easily visualize two conspirators, one with ticket who had passed the "screening" checkpoint walking over to this low barrier, and the other throwing a carryon bag of whatever explosive du jour up over that barrier. They could have done it completely unseen, as there weren't any security cameras obviously covering that area. (I used to be in the security field and installed cameras, so I sorta have a general idea on what to look for.)
Like I said, I've been in the "security" field, and what actually is good security often is counter-intuitive to someone who isn't well versed. Like thinking that having a huge solid core door with a deadbolt lock on the door- then having several "lites" (small panes of glass) on each side of the door to provide light and view outward. Yeah, real high security. One sharp tap to break the lite closest to the lock and you're inside. The big, solid core door and hurky deadbolt are the "theatre of security" and provide a nice, warm fuzzy feeling of protection to the homeowner. "Boy, nobody is going to break down that door!" they think, when there are a hundred other places of entry that are less than trivial to enter into the home- viz., the doggy door on the back door.
The American people are being herded by the "theatre of security" into giving up their rights, thinking that the theatrics will give them security. The knee-jerk reactions of mental midgets who think that Gilmore and others are "freaking lunatics" for wanting to stand up for our Constitutional rights is the reason we are losing those selfsame rights. Without putting some thought and understanding into this "security" they think they are buying with our rights, they will soon learn the meaning of "I'm with the Governemnt. Trust me".
Yeah,He can walk, drive, swim, bike or crawl.....just not fly... until they decide that you can't walk, drive, swim, bike or crawl.
"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."
--Protestant minister Martin Neimoller, regarding Germany's fall to the Nazis
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Sorry I waited a week to log back on to FR... It's become so partisan (republican) here that I don't freep as much as I used to. Your post was sure worth coming back for.
Libertarian sentiment was much more prevalent here when it was boy clinton & his dirtbag minions pissing on the Constitution. Bush could probably rename Guantanamo Bay Auschwitz, start running DU'ers up through the chimneys by the thousands, and the harshest rebuke he'd get here would be "as long as the attorney general says it passes Constitutional muster, it's the price we pay for living in the freest, greatest, kindest, most powerful nation the world has ever seen".
Your description of yourself as a "white haired old geezer" means you're older than my 41 years, and have seen a lot more of the steady erosion of liberty this country has seen, on it's journey from Constitutional Republic to today's "democracy" - the current socialist welfare/police state. That must account for your passionate criticism of the absurd "security" measures taken since 9/11. Pity the fools who think the gov't protects the nation by strip-searching grandmothers while thousands illegally cross the southern border each and every day!
As for myself, having seen less of this nation's past greatness, and having experienced only the more rapid slide towards ruin that's occured since the '60's, I am pretty much resigned to the fate that seems destined for us - decline, despotism and destruction. I'll whine about it, but I can't seem to get too worked up about what seems to be fait accompli.
In closing, another "well done" for your post. The Neimoller and Franklin quotations are two of my favorites. Right up there with "give me liberty or give me death" (Henry),"peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none" (Jefferson), and perhaps the most clairvoyant, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship (Tyler).
Funny how men, centuries dead, could see so clearly the mistakes we're making, warn us of the consequences, and be so completely ignored.
When irrational behavior becomes institutionalized, how long can a nation last?