Posted on 02/27/2005 7:13:06 AM PST by TheBlackFeather
I've been reading these threads, and neither one of you have answered what I think is a very real question: HOW does showing an ID at an airport make you safer?
What is really happening here is that both of you are trying to make an argumentum ad consequentiam, a fallacy in and of itself, but without even attempting to show that the consequences are true!
Maybe we should restrict travellers' right to travel anonymously if it can be shown that showing ID makes the world a safer place--but no one has made that showing to me, or anyone else, I don't think.
Don't forget, for the vast majority of airline history, no ID was required to get on airplanes, and the world continued to function just fine.
You and the other government bootlickers, the "security trumps freedom" crowd are nothing more than Big Brother statists. You and your ilk are crying little children, seeing terrorists on every corner and wetting your pants.
Drink the kool-aid newbie.
The government is not constituted to gratify your whims. If you want it to give you an illusion of safety, it needs to get that power from a law, which you should pay for.
Evidently. Obviously, if this was the policy, someone screwed up somewhere. [shrug]
Interesting character. Thanks for posting.
FROM THE ARTICLE - This is what we are talking about...
Ann Davis, a spokeswoman for TSA, tacitly acknowledged the strange rabbit hole into which Gilmore has fallen. The Department of Justice, in its first response to Gilmore's suit two years ago, declined to acknowledge whether such an instruction existed. Later, it admitted its existence. Then the government asked a judge to hold a hearing in secret and preclude Gilmore's lawyers from seeing the regulation they sought to challenge, the contents of which seem to be pretty widely known.
No one is arguing for the terrorist to have easier access, if that is what you think, the point is living under an open set of laws.
Random searches of little old ladies with Brooklyn accents are indeed a waste of time. However, trying to confirm that the person under whose name the ticket was bought has matching ID to that name serves a useful purpose.
Even if it is a false name, that false name can be a known alias in the intelligence data bank. Since you cannot pay cash and hop on a plane anymore, such a name, even if false, leaves behind an intelligence data trail.
As far as "getting on my ship", yes, every Officer of the Deck aboard my ship knew me by sight but, to get to the ship you had to walk through a restricted area where many warships were docked including carriers with thousands of men unknown to our crew. Nobody walked through that restricted area without their ID hung visibly around their neck. and available for immediate inspection upon request. To do so invited immediate detention for questioning.
That is why, on my last day aboard after turning in my ship's ID card, I required a Master-at-Arms to escort me from the quarterdeck out to the gate of the restricted area.
No visible ID available for immediate inspection upon request - No passage. - No exceptions. - Not even if you were the Commanding Officer of a CVN.
Is that any way to treat a loyal U.S. Naval officer with Constitutional rights?
You betcha.
Personally, I want there to be times and places where only US Citizens, or those who have been properly vetted to some other standard, are permitted. I am prepared to give examples. Perhaps y'all can think of one, too...where were you last November 2?
I would hope for a means of ensuring that, to include ID of some kind.
We have not yet reached that stage of societal development where I can demand that someone who has never seen me must accept that I am who I say I am because I say I am.
Perhaps you should stay at home and cower under the covers.
I can go on an airplane with an ID and enough items that are still allowed and cause damage if that was my intent.
Or I can enter a Federal 'installation' as they call it without showing ID AND get weapons and explosive devices or guns inside if that was my intent too.
If someone intends to kill themselves in the process of killing you, there ain't a whole that you can do and showing an ID card to a moron who doesn't know what he's looking at ain't gonna help you neither.
Quit worrying about your pathetic life and start being free.
All states will issue non-driver ID. How do you think the homeless get their booze? They don't drive.
You are committing the logical fallacy of trying to prove a negative. One cannot prove that he is not going to take peoples' lives on the plane. The Constitution does protect Individual Rights. The government of the United States as it currently operates is eating those rights alive. Your argument would be valid, if and only if, the individual corporations require their customers to show identification. That would be laissez-faire capitalism at work. And I'd be free to fly another airline if I didn't want to give i.d.
But it is the government who passed this law, I'm sure. And by your reasoning, why don't the bus lines require papers? And by your reasoning, we will all be forced to carry government i.d. in order to protect ourselves from individuals who pose a danger to our lives. Now that is circular reasoning.
Does identification work 100% of the time? Do policemen prevent all crimes? Do we live in a place called 'Perfect'? No. But that is no reason to throw our hands up in the air and surrender to the whims of any Me-ocrat.
Most rational conservatives do not find it outrageous to require someone to show a drivers license to board a plane during a time when our enemies have sword to use our planes to kill us.
One earlier poster saw the ID requirement as "licking the boots of our master." Statements like this render kook status on those who post them.
With all due respect to Ben Franklin, I can easily flip his famous statement around: Those who would give up security in exchange for temporary liberty deserve neither.
I think you're basically right. The 9/11 hijackers had valid, government issued ID.
Yet somehow there are people that are convinced that showing that ID to government agent magically makes the flight "safer."
Well, you showed ID? Must not be a hijacker then. All right, onto the plane with you. Very good. No problem here.
No thank you Hillery.....
So your answer is that you can't say how it makes the flight safer.
Just so we're clear, you can't rationalize this law at all. All right.
Once again, EVEN IN THEORY, how does showing an ID make you safer?
Tell me how, EVEN IN THEORY how I'm safer by showing an ID before I get onto an airplane. Tell me how. The 9/11 hijackers had valid government IDs. Did that make those flights safer?
If you say something like, well, we can check against names of terrorists, that's just absurd, as if terrorists intent on hijacking an airplane would obtain ID that listed their terrorist name in first place. As if Osama bin Laden is going to get on an airplane with an ID that says "Osama bin Laden." Please.
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