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I just wanted to say thanks for a splendid discussion overnight. I side with Exodus almost completely, but GR made a great case for the other side.

Much hinges on the word "reasonable" in this discussion. Keeping Richard Reids off planes is in everyone's best interest, of course. The ways to be absolutely sure of this number in the dozens. Flying naked is the most extreme; searching EVERYONE is another extreme. But what do you do to be sure of your pilots? Your flight attendants? There is no absolute security, obviously.

My preference would be to pre-screen all travelers. Let the trusted travelers on unhindered unless they give substantive cause to require search. Search EVERYBODY else, but do it respectfully.

Everywhere I go now, I am scrutinized and treated as a potential criminal. We all are. And there are surely criminals around--people who take because they are too lazy to work for and earn what they want. I had $40 worth of bottled water stolen right off my porch last week. I was asked to help a fellow student cheat on the final exam in a class I was taking this past fall. You bet I reported it; he was asking me to risk 140-plus credit hours of hard work and the hope that soon I'll actually get a degree. I am TIRED of standing in and taking the punishment for criminals just because they haven't all been caught. That goes for terrorism. I want THEM punished, not me. I want to be able to carry a gun, spend my own money, try to better myself without government permission. I want the right to educate my children as I see fit. I want to be able to buy a toilet that works.

I don't blow up buildings, but I am the one who faces punitive searches should I fly. I don't steal, but I'm the one who must be carefully watched entering and leaving a store. I don't rape children, but my children cannot roam the neighborhood because we've given the streets to the abductors and rapists. They have rights. I have restrictions. WHY must the honest, decent people give way again and again and again to the bad guys? Why must I be confined while the bad guys roam free?

I'll tell you why. Because of political correctness. Because the liberal peaceniks can't stand to do the hardest thing of all--take out the evildoers who hate our civilization, who have proclaimed THEMSELVES our enemy. That is what they are, whether they highjack planes or swipe water bottles: enemies to civilization! Look at what Happygal said. She thinks I want to put a bullet in the head of a stranger. No. I want to put a bullet in the head of the many strangers who have declared that they want my babies dead. They proclaimed themselves my enemy. I did not go out seeking harm to them. They seek my blood. I have the God-given right to defend my family, to demand my government defend me--but what is happening? My government wants me to hide, to submit to more restrictions! Don't like it--don't fly? God gave ME physics too. Aviation is MINE, my birthright as a member of western civilization.

I do not believe anyone has the right to make me pay my dignity in order to fly. If I work and earn the price of a ticket, and I cannot harm anyone else by flying, my place in the sky should not be subject to government approval.