Never let a crisis go to waste. That is the motto of every government agency and every bureaucrat. Citing “heightened tensions over terrorism,” the Transportation Safety Administration has unilaterally decided that fliers can no longer “opt-out” of the potentially cancer-causing and completely useless full body scanners in favor of a pat-down from a TSA agent. There was no debate in Congress. Not even an executive order. It was just a rule made by an unelected and unaccountable body, as one might expect in a dictatorship.
The TSA decision is a psychological defeat for liberty as well. Removing the option to “defy” the agency’s demand that travelers submit to the scanners takes away that little bit of what America once was, the independent spirit of a free people. Now, head down, we must march through like cattle as our rude overlords bark out orders. It didn’t have to be this way. Ron Paul saw this coming and introduced in several Congresses the American Traveler Dignity Act, which would have curtailed TSA powers and made TSA agents subject to the same assault laws as the rest of us. Here is a clip to remember while being corralled through the TSA cancer machines this Christmas season:
