Continental Drift

Steve Levitt agrees with Continental Drift!

Steve Levitt has a post on his blog about the "ridiculous rules" that aircraft passengers are subjected to and the TSA's attempt to keep the flying public scared. He even references The Economist article that I posted .

I often leave my iPod on, and sometimes (gasp!) my laptop, which I leave secretly running inside my briefcase. I am happy to report no problems so far.

Levitt's got the right attitude! I am amazed at how easily the public --and in particular the American public -- has been in given up civil liberties in an apparent attempt to retain the illusion of safety. The goal of terrorism is not necessarily the killing of innocents, but rather the creation of a fearful state that envelops a nation AFTER the attacks. The extension of Executive power, the racial profiling, the ease with which citizens give up civil liberties, and advocating torture as acceptable to name just four.

Or as Simon Jenkins of the Guardian put it:

What has changed, grotesquely, is the aftershock. Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people. It is this that puts global terror into the bang. While we take ever more extravagant steps to ward off the bangs, we do the opposite with the terrorist aftershock. We turn up its volume. We seem to wallow in fear.

Yes, I have an interest in this because ever since the ban on liquid and gels in flights I waste 2 hours of my life having to check-in and retrieve my bag. And what's with the removing shoes at airports? I know that some knucklehead tried to smuggle explosive onto a plane in his boots, but it could have so easily have been in his boxers...and then what? Would TSA like to check in there too?

The stock-market moves on "fear and greed." It looks like most human behavior adheres to that theme.

Quotes that do a better job at expressing my thoughts:

"...They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and, above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult...It was not desireable that [they] should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice..."

- George Orwell, "1984"

What happened to America as land of the free and producer of top-rate statesmen one of whom said: