Freedom Trampled by Fear (the loss of free selection of meals without fear of government repercussions)

I was listening to the radio this morning on my way to work and I heard Terry O'Brien mention that the Transportation Safety Administration wanted to start collecting information about passenger meal selection. The first thing I thought, 'for what purpose do they need this information?' Then I thought, 'what right have they to this information?'
She then said that they were probably using it to study the behavior of passengers to determine if they may be terrorists. Terry noted that they have computer logarithms (her co-host suggested that she meant algorithm) that they can put this data through to profile the passengers to see if they may be a terrorist threat. They joked that the ACLU will probably get all up in arms over this one. Her own state of Illinois agrees that racial profiling is a crime. Meanwhile the TSA has taken to settling profiling cases out of court rather than facing a decision by the Supreme Court that this is unconstitutional. Immediately I was trying to dial the radio station but I couldn’t get through. While I was trying to dial, she said that people do not have a right to fly, that it is a privilege. When did it become a privilege for a private individual to enter into a contract with a corporation for transportation? The day the “Patriot” Act passed, that is when. Don't worry, your rights aren't evaporating.
I thought about the references that I hear from many of the socialists, communists and liberals that I know about President George W. Bush being a Fascist. What is fascism? It is a political philosophy that glorifies the state (there is a very good description of Fascism at http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/whatfasc.html). I don't believe that President is Fascist but it appears that many of his supporters are becoming just that. If anyone questions his decisions, the Bush cultists immediately decry that person as being un-American. Since when did it become un-American to protest government action (see the two quotes from American history in this essay)? That was how this country was founded. Remember that your freedom ultimately was defined by a group of traitors and the one we are taught was a traitor, Benedict Arnold, was the one who was loyal to his king and country.
Now Terry is an intelligent woman. She must be, because I agree with her quite often, although I don't particularly care for her delivery. I am certain she knows the meaning of the following two quotes:
Patrick Henry said, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” Another respected individual, Benjamin Franklin, stated, “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security.”
The meanings of the two quotes are obvious. The first establishes that the government should be allowed only to do what the people allow it to do. In fact, that is what the Constitution states. People accepting the gradual changes taking place in our society are slowly eroding this. Franklin's quote is far more to the point. He is saying that you can't protect freedoms by taking them away. An analogy is the boiling frog. If you take a frog and drop it in a pan of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. If you place that same frog in a pan of warm water and slowly raise the temperature to a boil, you will cook it. We are the frogs and that water is our liberties. We are remaining warm and cozy as our freedoms evaporate.

Respond to this Essay

This occasional unsyndicated opinion column, A Rant of My Own, fails to appear in more than 250 papers nationwide.