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annoyed In a discussion with some people I know, I found someone who has the attitude that violating his civil liberties is okay as long as it's protecting his life. He's all for the random bag searches on public transportation. This is from a former serviceman.
I told him that my liberties were more important than my life.
The response was that if I liked my liberties so much, try taking them to saudi arabia or somewhere else.
My liberties aren't there, they are here in the US. (which he felt for some reason made his point, but it's the exact opposite of his point) My liberties are because of our government and because of the people like him who fought to defend them. As has been said before, "I may not agree with what you are saying, but I will defend with my life your right to say them", alternately "We have fought so the damn fools of this country are free to continue to do their damn fool things."
I'm not for the random bag searches because they do not work, and told him so. His response was "well do you want us to be doing nothing?"
If all we can do is nothing, then yes, I want us to do nothing.
The only thing that can be done is to be reactive. Identify the perpetrators (post mortem), follow the trail back as far as you can to catch the planners, and then prosecute them and any others that you can find in their organization.
Random searches will not turn up a bomb, and (as has been pointed out) if it does turn up a bomb, all the bomber has to do is detonate it in the crowd rather than on the train or bus. Same effect (terror) with possibly less property damage.
July 22 2005, 10:55:19 UTC 6 years ago
Those people who don't mind losing their liberties are the ones who should leave, preferably before they screw everyone else over. Oh that's right, TOO LATE!
If it doesn't hurt someone else, I should be allowed to do it. For situations where harm to other people is difficult to determine, there should be a guideline. Like jaywalking. There's no reason for a law against jaywalking in tiny suburbs with little traffic. And there are places in urban California where that's still true. But yesterday a guy jaywalking made eleven people wait for him to get out of the way-- he couldn't know he wasn't hurting someone.
I would have no problem with searches of all people, but I don't believe in "random". And no one else should believe in "random" either. Knowing the searches are going to be unfair makes me justly irritated. And it's trivial to space out people travelling together so that at most one of them is searched-- meaning that a random search cannot prevent a team of people from getting their contraband through.
I don't think the government can do nothing, but I do think what they are doing is worse than nothing. It strips away responsibility, consideration, and individual attention from the people. If the government openly said, "Random bag checks aren't going to catch everything or even most things and they inconvenience everyone. We are going to use that money to put officers all over. If you see someone or something untoward, report it to any uniformed agent. We need everyone alert, if we created a security bottleneck, the inconvenience would distract people from dangerous situations which might be prevented."
But we're spending all this money to protect against big evils while the little evils go unpunished. I'm not anywhere nearly as concerned about the bus or train as I am being mugged by the crazy homeless guy who gets belligerent when people don't give him money. Maybe I'd be more willing to tolerate what the government did do to "protect" me if it worked--- but right now, random searches seem to be a penalty against regular people while not inconveniencing evil doers. If they did nothing about security of public transit, at least then the money would be there to replace buses and trains which were destroyed. They cannot catch people openly eating fast food on the bus, how are they going to catch someone who is trying to be sneaky?
No, the government cannot handle even the everyday woes of public transit, why should I trust in a program which deliberately inconveniences me over other (more probably guilty) people? Especially when they've proven that it cannot work?