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If you thought the “Transportation
Security Administration” would limit itself to conducting
unconstitutional searches at airports, think again. The agency intends to
assert jurisdiction over our nation’s highways, waterways, and railroads
as well. TSA launched a new campaign of random checkpoints on Tennessee
highways last week, complete with a sinister military-style acronym–VIP(E)R—as a name for the program.
As with TSA’s random searches at
airports, these roadside searches are not based on any actual suspicion of
criminal activity or any factual evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever by those
detained. They are, in effect, completely random. So first we are told by the
U.S. Supreme Court that American citizens have no 4thamendment protections at
border crossings, even when standing on U.S. soil. Now TSA takes the next
logical step and simply detains and searches U.S. citizens at wholly internal
checkpoints.
The slippery slope is here. When does it
end? How many more infringements on our liberties, our property, and our
basic human rights to travel freely will it take before people become fed up
enough to demand respect from their government? When will we demand that the
government heed obvious constitutional limitations, and stop treating
ordinary Americans as criminal suspects in the absence of probable cause?
The real tragedy occurs when Americans
incrementally become accustomed to this treatment on the roads just as they
have become accustomed to it in the airports. We already accept arriving at
the airport 2 or more hours before a flight to get through security; will we
soon have to build in an extra 2 or 3 hours into our road trips to allow for
checkpoint traffic?
Worse, some people are lulled into a
false sense of security and are actually grateful for this added police
presence! Should we really hail the expansion of the police state as an
enhancement to safety? I submit that an attitude of acquiescence to TSA authority
is thoroughly dangerous, un-American, and insulting to earlier freedom-loving
generations who built this country.
I am certain people will complain about
this, once they have to sit in stopped traffic for a few extra hours to allow
for random searches of cars. However, I am also certain it merely will take
another “foiled” plot to silence many people into gladly
accepting more government mismanagement of safety.
Vigilant, observant, law-abiding,
gun-owning citizens defend themselves and stop crimes every day before police
can respond. That is the source of real security in America: the 2nd
Amendment right to defend oneself. The answer is for people to be empowered
to protect themselves. Yet how many weapons might these checkpoints
confiscate? Even when individual go through all the legal hoops of licensing
and permits, the chances of harassment or outright confiscation of weapons
and detention of citizens when those weapons are found at a TSA checkpoint is
extremely high.
Disarming the
highways and filling them full of jack-booted thugs demanding to see our
papers is no way to make them safer. Instead, it is a great way to expand
government surveillance powers and tighten the noose around our liberties.
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