TSA: Walmart Greeters With Badges

Taxpayers may blush when they learn that their $8 billion-per-year Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is hardly satisfying its purported mission of protecting the nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce. According to a June 2015 report by the Huffington Post, the TSA has failed 95 percent of airport security tests conducted by Homeland Security. Corroborating this story, ABC News reported that undercover investigators revealed security failures at dozens of the nation's busiest airports, successfully smuggling mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials.

Oddly yet unsurprisingly, the Transportation Security Administration conveniently dismisses rules — such as the removal of shoes, belts, and jackets, the separation of laptops from luggage, and the use of bins — when these shortcuts suit their whims. One may then wonder how many of these perceived rules have spawned from the traditions of TSA workers who were, in the strictest sense, operating merely from their own discretion, suspicions, and loose interpretations of their respective positions.

The make-work only seems to fester within these busy-bodied organizations of ambiguous ends. Even the queue now falls under the systemic scrutiny of TSA agents full of Walmart-style greetings, multi-billion-dollar smiles, and the childish curiosity of unskilled adults trained to swipe hands to determine whether travelers are fit to roam the airport and board an airplane, all with only a perfunctory understanding of technical indicators supposedly capable of achieving these ends.

While swiping my hands today, the TSA agent wished to engage me in conversation. When did this become compulsory? He was conspicuously confused and displeased with my silence, resorting to harsher, more demanding tones upon my continued silence despite his repeated attempts to buy my efforts, my words, and something more than my obedience, probably to reconcile the discomfort of unfounded authority into which his employment has placed him.

Complementing the scene of organized incompetence is a K9 unit which strolls about the aisles, seemingly successful only in disrupting the gaits of eager travelers who, despite understanding the futility of the TSA, tolerate the inconvenience because their fellow travelers are willing or because the marginal costs of resisting outweigh any probability of benefit, or to serve the long-shot chance that their minor inconvenience will enable the TSA to thwart that next terror threat, despite a tested record showing otherwise.

Part of the reason why so many people are willing to work for or endure the processes of the TSA is related to the continued deference and social payment of smiles and gratitude issued to those who work for this fruitless agency. They earn far more in the social graces shared with them than they earn on their paychecks, but the combination comfortably warrants the per-capita ease of the sufferable masquerade. In due time, however, the theater will become more tangible and more vast, eventually reaching you before you even arrive at the airport — some of this is already happening.

With each forced smile, uncomfortable discussion, swiped hand, and groping agent, we surrender our personal dignity and our liberty to favor a notion which presupposes that each individual is a criminal until cleared by a higher authority. The TSA has proven to be nothing more than a modern boondoggle.

Let’s free its workers to contribute to the lives of its donors instead of forcing Americans to pay for a service to which they never consented. The TSA is yet another example of the progression from physical, apparent slavery to its psychological, more palatable counterpart of assumed responsibility and taxation. This isn’t progress at all. What's more, it's unconstitutional.

Comments

The Deal with Tariffs

Over the course of President Trump’s two terms, there has been much talk around the matter of tariffs — taxes on imported goods. However, much of the talk seems to miss the point. After all, for those of us who seek the truth, it’s not really a question of whether tariffs are ‘good’ but whether they are preferable to other kinds of taxes — assuming, of course, that taxes are the rule, as certain as the eventuality of death. First, let’s establish the theory: beyond the generic purpose of revenue generation for the state, the institution of tariffs ordinarily serves to reduce (or discourage) imports by making them artificially more expensive, while encouraging domestic production by making domestic products more appealing on a relative price basis. In the realm of foreign affairs, tariffs are instituted or threatened in the course of international trade negotiations in order to signal dissatisfaction with existing trade barriers and to push for more favorable trade terms; or in ord...

Summarizing the “Separation of Church and State”

There is much confusion surrounding the concept of the “separation of church and state”; much of it likely born out of the steep secular decline in religious affiliation across recent generations, with particular emphasis among atheists and anti-deists. While many have hastened to leverage this language (“separation of church and state”) in order to condemn or censure religious values — particularly those which are Christian — where they have carried influence in public life (i.e. prayer in schools, teachers covering lessons from the Bible, government representatives appealing to God, coinage bearing the words “In God We Trust”), the truth is that this “separation” was never expected to completely eliminate religious practice or religious sentiment from all matter of public life. In fact, religion was so deeply enmeshed in American life during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the French magistrate and prison reformer Gustave de Beaumont, during his nine-month tour of A...

Rethinking “Forgiveness”

Forgiveness is often hailed as the ultimate moral virtue — a cleansing of the soul, a sign of spiritual maturity, and the first step toward healing fractured relationships. But in modern discourse, particularly in religious and pop-psychological circles, “forgiveness” has extended beyond the sensible, beyond etiquette, and beyond justice and useful application. The concept of “forgiveness” has been stretched far outside of the realms of that which is easy to “forgive”, that which is merely inconvenient or annoying, or relatively innocuous or insignificant, where “forgiveness” is merely part of tolerating people’s human shortcomings, their mistakes and their accidents , or extending ‘mercy’ to those who’ve disrespected or “trespassed against us” (and have since offered sincere apologies and the necessary restitution). This reimagined kind of “forgiveness” has taken on a dangerously idealized form ignorant to or dismissive of the laws and limits of human nature and the potential imp...

Their Lives, Their Fortunes, and Their Sacred Honor

A recent YouTube post by the political organization PragerU betrays the truth about the American Revolution. It goes as follows: “Britain spent a fortune defending the colonies in the French & Indian War. America’s response? Boycotts, protests, rebellion. Ingratitude that sparked a revolution.” This description of history is not just a reductive reframing of the issues; it is a crude and provocative statement insulting the intelligence of Americans who remember their history and disrespecting the men who staked everything in their noblest of causes during the American Revolution. One commenter in the comments section even sided with PragerU, taking to task any who dares criticize the post: “Are you incapable of creating scenarios from the opposite side?” Unfortunately for this commenter, true history isn’t about “creating scenarios”; it’s about understanding what actually happened — the totality of the circumstances. So, let us do just that: let’s get straight to the fac...

The ‘Values’ Problem in the NFL

Every year, there is talk across the major sports leagues about which players are due for contract extensions and huge paydays. The chatter is seemingly endless, and it often seems to cast a shadow over the sports themselves — talking heads arguing and debating, insisting that so-and-so is going to ‘reset the market’ or so-and-so is demanding the ‘market rate’ for his position. This is where the conversation goes awry, economically speaking. The truth is that players are not commodities: they are neither fungible nor interchangeable. Each player brings a distinct skill set, and each team operates within a unique scheme, meaning that each player’s value is situational rather than universal. There is, thus, no ‘market rate’ for any player or position; contracts exist in relation to each team’s particular situation, and every dollar spent on one player (in a salary-cap league) directly reduces the resources available for others — where ‘overspending’ in any case necessari...

Fischer: Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse (featuring the Morals of Chess by Benjamin Franklin)

Buy your copy today of Fischer: Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse (featuring the Morals of Chess by Benjamin Franklin) , available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble . The name Bobby Fischer reigns supreme in the world of chess, yet there was a time when it hogged headlines, struck fear into the eyes of the competition, and was on the lips of folks all across the globe. More than the face of the centuries-old game, there was a time when Bobby Fischer was synonymous with the cause and spirit of America, that his moves on the chessboard sought more than checkmate but to pit the strength of “raw-boned American individualism” against “the Soviet megalithic system” which had come to dominate the game of chess at the same time it dominated Cold War politics. Fischer’s triumph over the USSR's Boris Spassky in the ’72 World Chess Championship would ultimately be celebrated as a symbolic and diplomatic victory for the U.S., but, as time would tell, it would not mean the American...

The People's Banner: Why the “Thin Blue Line” Flag Betrays the Spirit of the Stars and Stripes

The American flag — proudly known as the Stars and Stripes — is more than a banner of colors stitched together. It is a living symbol of rebellion, unity, and the sovereignty of the people. It was never originally the flag of a government, but of a movement; not a mark of officialdom, but of revolution. Having evolved from the Continental Union Flag, its stripes — with their roots in the "rebellious stripes" of the Sons of Liberty — represent resistance to abusive power, a stand against imperial overreach, and a declaration that legitimate authority flows from the consent of the governed. In this light, the proliferation of the “Thin Blue Line” version of the American flag is not merely a modification of a unique American symbol; it is a mutilation of the flag’s fabric and its meaning. It transforms a people’s flag into a government’s flag, in direct contradiction to its foundational ethos. The Stars and Stripes emerged during the crucible of the American Revolution. Designe...

Death By Cop

A recent post from a popular YouTube channel has provided more evidence of that which is blatantly obvious in modern America, at least to those who are willing to face the truth: the fact that cops, as with the governments they serve, are the enemy to goodness, justice, and American liberty. This latest post is from The Civil Rights Lawyer, a channel (by a practicing civil rights lawyer) documenting police misconduct and civil rights violations since the year 2020. This time, it is a case of an elderly man, a former pastor suffering from dementia, murdered at the hands of “ the very people who were supposed to protect and care for him”: “Officers were dispatched to a business to assist an elderly customer who appeared to be suffering from dementia. At the scene, officers found him extremely confused. He told them the year was 1948 and that the president was George Washington. So they call his daughter to come pick him up. So how did things go so terribly wrong that day, tha...

“Stolen Land”

The claim that America was built on “stolen land” is not only a politically-loaded oversimplification, but a deliberately narrow framing that keeps America — and America alone — under perpetual moral scrutiny. It collapses fundamentally different actors, motives, and historical processes into a single accusation, thereby obscuring more than it explains. At a macro political level, land claims have always been in flux. Long before European contact, tribes across North America routinely warred over territory, resources, hunting grounds, and waterways. Claims were seasonal, contingent, and often overlapping, shaped by migration patterns, environmental conditions, and intertribal treaties that themselves shifted over time. Had Europeans never settled in America, this dynamic would have continued to dominate; it was the prevailing condition of the continent. From this perspective, “ownership” has never been an abstract moral constant but a function of enforceability under a...

Cullen Roche's Not So "Pragmatic Capitalism"

In his riveting new work Pragmatic Capitalism , Cullen Roche, founder of Orcam Financial Group, a San Diego-based financial firm, sets out to correct the mainstream schools of economic thought, focusing on Keynesians, Monetarists, and Austrians alike. This new macroeconomic perspective claims to reveal What Every Investor Needs to Know About Money and Finance . Indeed, Roche introduces the layman to various elementary principles of economics and financial markets, revealing in early chapters the failed state of the average hedge fund and mutual fund operators — who are better car salesmen than financial pundits, Roche writes — who have fallen victim to the groupthink phenomenon, responsible for their nearly perfect positive correlation to the major indexes; and thus, accounting for tax, inflation, and service adjustments, holistically wiping out any value added by their professed market insight. Roche also references popular stu...

Paradocracy

Search This Blog