Then you indict Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Daimler-Chrysler, and every other automobile company on the planet for doing precisely the same thing, as well as every other business who produces a product that people use every day. There is no such thing as a completely safe product, and no amount of engineering or 20-20 hindsight can make any complex product completely, utterly safe in every scenario.
Any consumer item, whether it is an automobile, toaster, or jet plane, is a compromise between absolute safety (the ideal) and lowest possible operating cost. Car manufacturers know this very well and often knowingly withhold features ("technology x") that would make their vehicles safer from their designs for the simple, inescapable reason that they would cost too much. And yes, car manufacturers know very well that some jury somewhere is probably going to find them at fault for not incorporating this technology X into their designs - they consider it a cost of doing business.
If the federal government is to be held responsible for not mandating armored cockpit doors since the first hijacking of a civilian passenger airliner (in the 60s, if memory serves), then we should immediately file massive product-liability lawsuits against every automobile manufacturer for not developing pure titanium frames and body panels, puncture-proof fuel tanks and tires, glass that breaks and allows missiles inside the passenger compartment, speed governors that prevent motor vehicles from going faster than 5 MPH, and a fuel source other than dangerous, explosive gasoline.
Armored cockpit doors weigh more than the standard model. Every "improvement" made to an airframe adds weight and costs money to implement; money that you and I pay out in higher airfares. While I do not object in principle to increased safety in the air, there comes a point at which these "clarion calls" for continual, unfunded mandates become unreasonable and downright silly. I for one don't want to have to pay $10,000 to fly to Podunk to see my aunt because the flight I have to take has every safety measure known to man, as mandated by greedy lawyers, continuous lawsuits, and Quixotic politicians.
Right on. I will give another example of this, too. There is a proposal that commercial airliners incorporate anti-missile defenses. This will cost big dollars, perhaps millions per plane, and I can tell you from AF experience, there is very little hope of success with present technology. Sure, you might be able to defeat heat-seekers, but what about wire-guided? Possibly you can defeat some percent, but then why not add sufficient systems to defeat 100%? and on and on and on ...
The way to defeat the Islamofacist scum, unfortunately, is to prevent them from firing the missile in the first place, and that means intelligence work and some restrictions on everyone's privacy (which is not a Right) in an effort to increase the chances of catching the bad guys. This is the reason for the Patriot Act, and similar laws. I also believe, as I posted long ago on this thread, that relaxing gun laws are a useful part of the mix, and that even those favoring such unConstitutional (in my view) laws in the first place can be persuaded to this.
The Patriot Act asks very little of the typical citizen, and I suspect it will always be very transparent to me. I've not noticed it at all since its passage. I've not changed my life or correspondence. I don't fear that somebody might arrest me for criminal behavior as a result of it. I don't fear that Hitlery or any of the other socialist Demodogs will construct and use an FBI file against me. Yet, it has resulted in the arrest of at least one Islamofacist professor and associates. I suspect there will be many more uses in the war against the Islamofacists.
Don't like that? Propose a better way, but before you propose, please ask yourself how such a proposal can be argued against. Think twice about whether it really would work and makes sense. If you don't have to get higher than a grade school education to formulate objections to the proposal, save everyone's time, and your own embarassment, and keep it to yourself.
PS: the Jeffersonian liberty vs security quote counts as not having to get higher than a grade school education to counter as he recognized the need to have tradeoffs even in that arena or he would never have penned any document outlining a governmental institution in the first place.