GG, you obviously misunderstand. I don't advocate not wearing a seat belt or crash helmet or life jacket. On the contrary. I was doing it before nearly anyone else and all before they were compulsory with dopey bureaucrats, wet behind the ears, started ordering me to do what I was already doing other than in unusual circumstances when I didn't want to for some reason.
No, I have never been busted for not wearing a seat belt or helmet.
Because one thinks that people should decide things for themselves, doesn't mean that one thinks wearing seat belts or helmets should be banned.
<The parents will say ""where does he get these wild ideas from?...no son of ours will be free to be stupid.>
I'm safer than most people who think they are being safe by mindlessly and enthusiastically inventing and adopting rules. Substituting rules for thinking isn't safer.
The idiots running airport security are reducing, not enhancing, safety. The vast amounts of money and opportunity cost [spending time standing in queues instead of doing something useful] could be spent on things with a better chance of improving safety [if safety really needs more improvement].
Note how they let Al Q hijack and crash a bunch of aircraft and kill thousands and destroy huge buildings. They did what one calls shut the cockpit door after the horse had bolted.
There isn't going to be another hijacking. Perhaps an Islamic Jihad Air Marshal will do it; having a gun will improve his chances [though that might not be sufficient to overcome the resistance of everyone on the aircraft]. A Moslem could apply for the job, then hijack the aircraft. It isn't permitted to discriminate by religion, so they'd be hired. When asked by the dopey job interviewer, "Are you Islamic Jihad?", the prospective air marshal would say "No." Kim Philby made it to the top of the British spying world. It should be a doddle to get good jobs in "Safety".
Somebody could get a job checking carry on bags for explosives at the x-ray machines. It would be easy enough not to notice the semtex inside a few books. Oooops, maybe I have just given an idea to AlQ. As Condoleezza would say, "Nobody imagined such a thing could happen" [as the 911 attacks]. I think Al Q could figure out that semtex or Polonium 210 in Bibles would be a fun thing to do.
One carry-on inspector could let through about 20 different people for 20 different flights. Sure, they'd be caught afterwards, but that wouldn't matter. If they boarded long flights to London, Tokyo, Sydney and longish flights to New York, they could probably get about 20 flights all at once.
The Mexican border seems to be fairly leaky. The Canadian border isn't a border. Canada probably doesn't check all containers as well as they do in Homeland Security.
A bit like paedophiles seem to like jobs where children are kept. "Are you a paedophile?" "No! How ridiculous".
As TJ says, history is about the power of the people, not the power of the wonderful people who struggle to get their nose in the public trough and rule making to order other people around, for their own good of course.
The current trend is to treat people as mindless serfs. State chattels. Weirdly, [to me], people are voting for more of the same, like turkeys voting for more public holidays such as Xmas and Thanksgiving.
Mqurice |
