America is rejecting the non-discriminatory principle, as its consequences become unbearable

It is among the evils, and perhaps is not the smallest, of democratical governments, that the people must feel, before they will see. When this happens, they are roused to action—hence it is that this form of government is so slow.
— George Washington to Henry Knox, March 8, 1787.

It should have happened nine years ago, when President Bush, in order to avoid ethnic profiling of Muslims, inaugurated the “treat all Americans as potential Muslim terrorists” regime in the nation’s airports, instead of doing what he should have done, which was to treat all potential Muslim terrorists as potential Muslim terrorists. But now it is happening: the American people are openly calling for profiling. Why? As I’ve said many times, quoting George Washington, people living in a democratic society will not resist an evil on the basis of reason alone; they will only resist it when it becomes unbearable to them. The American people should have regarded the humiliating and emasculating airport security regime of the last nine years, designed solely to avoid discriminating against Muslims, as unbearable and protested against it, but they didn’t. Now, however, the naked-body-scan-and-grope policy has accomplished what nine years of a somewhat lower level of mass humiliation in airports did not achieve: it has brought the liberal prohibition of discrimination to the point where it has become literally unbearable to us, and we are rising up against it.

Thus Kevin O’Brien writes in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a Democratic newspaper:

The truth is, the other side keeps proving that even though they’re incompetent at bomb-making, they’re good at beating our defense. It’s time we let our offense on the field.

That means profiling. Oh, that dirty, dirty word.

That means using what we know about our enemies against them.

We know who they are: They’re Muslims fighting a religious war. They’re from identifiable hot spots of Islamic militant activity—Middle Eastern and African countries, and radicalized enclaves in Europe. [LA replies: he should have mentioned jihadists in the U.S. as well.]

Anyone getting on a U.S. commercial carrier who fits the description ought to be carefully watched and ought to have to answer some probing questions on their way to a scanning and/or a pat-down. Every item of luggage associated with that person should be painstakingly checked, too.

Yes, the Muslim grievance lobby will scream. So what?

That will be a lot less screaming than we hear now, as law-abiding people who we know very well pose no threat are given their pick of needless, pointless humiliations.

The forces of political correctness will advance the argument that once we start profiling, the terrorists will recruit people who buck the profile.

Fine. That’s called making the other side work harder. And when they go prospecting for blond, blue-eyed, non-Muslims willing to fry their nether regions, they instantly make their command structure easier to infiltrate.

In the meantime, though, the TSA is getting us nowhere, and making the trip much more stressful than it needs to be.

- end of initial entry -

David M. writes:

It was about a year after the Muslim attack on New York and DC. My hair and beard were still red then. I was given the “hold your arms out” bit at St. Louis airport three times in a space of 30 minutes. I finally got a bit peeved and looked directly into the eye of the inspector. “Do I look like a Muslim to you?” Without missing a beat he replied “With your looks? No, but you COULD be Irish Republican Army … !”

He then seemed to realize what he had said. “Please do two more things. One, put your arms down. Two, go on!” That said with a rueful expression on his face, and we both burst out laughing. The whole thing was so patently silly even a TSA agent realized it.

Clark Coleman writes:

It is a start, but it is really a case of “America is making an unprincipled exception to the non-discriminatory principle.” I don’t think people are consciously philosophical enough to reject the principle in the many cases where they do not yet feel the problem.

LA replies:

From the various statements I’ve seen in this debate, I would say that people are indeed rejecting non-discriminatory principle, as it applies to airport security and Muslims. So, yes, it’s less than a full rejection of the non-discriminatory principle across the board. But it is definitely more than a mere unprincipled exception.

November 27

Debra C. writes:

I’ve been following the discussion and writing about TSA over-reach during the week at a number of other websites. It’s a debate rife with angles, implications, and passion—for those who understand the stakes. But one aspect I’d discounted was this point you made:

It should have happened nine years ago, when President Bush, in order to avoid ethnic profiling of Muslims, inaugurated the “treat all Americans as potential Muslim terrorists” regime in the nation’s airports, instead of doing what he should have done, which was to treat all potential Muslim terrorists as potential Muslim terrorists.

I only bring it up because it’s important to recognize why non-liberal/leftists went along with it. And I think it has very much to do with a feature of our political parties, the Republican Party specifically, that exposes real weakness. Ronald Reagan said it like this: Thou shalt not speak ill of thy fellow Republican. Apart from the fact that the Republican Party is infested with ‘progressives’ and transnationalists (we’d expect them to tow the non-discrimination line, happily), the rank and file is too easily led by the leadership—while simultaneously bombarded with propaganda by the state-run media—and this poses a real psychological barrier to clear thinking about the implications of a given policy; the threshold for awareness is vastly increased, and this is where your quote from George Washington comes into play.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 26, 2010 07:24 AM | Send