Wade, I applaud you for not being "assholic", as well as for being mostly right most of the time, and supremely intelligent and articulate.

Just the same, IMO you have a blind spot on this issue. First of all, as PFWT said, flying is not really a "freedom" - Constitutionally anyway. Freedom of the business to not associate with whoever the hell they don't want to associate with is on more solid Constitutional ground.

More importantly, though, (and I go round and round with people of your persuasion who are a LOT less civil and articulate in another forum on this topic), LIFE, LIBERTY, and the Pursuit of HAPPINESS - which the great majority of Americans are less in "pursuing" mode and more in "keeping" mode - are what is at stake here. How can you or any Good Normal right-thinking American just cavalierly fart off the idea of hundreds, thousands, or maybe even millions of Americans being KILLED in a major terrorist event? That, to me, VERY MUCH trumps the few very minor inconveniences we are asked to endure - which hardly even rise to the level of compromising our Freedom. But if LIFE means so little to you or anybody of similar perspective, how about FREEDOM itself? (Or Happiness for that matter?) How much FREEDOM would we have in the chaotic aftermath of something like 9/11 or worse - like Nuclear worse? And that's not even getting into the slim but horrible prospect of our enemies actually winning somehow and imposing Sharia Law or some other form of true tyranny on Americans - not just the minor compromises that some bellyache about.

I always wished - even back in 1964 - that Goldwater had said "Extremism in the Defense of AMERICA is no vice", because with virtually any alternative to America and American world dominance, there sure as hell AIN'T Freedom.

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Flying is not a freedom, it is a choice. No freedom is restricted by rules and regulations put in place over commercial air travel.

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Rights exist that are far more important than than those stated in the Constitution.

Does anyone deny that we have "rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? Well, those are stated nowhere in the Constitution. Why is that do you suppose?

You have a right of travel. To say otherwise is to say we are serfs. And if we have a right to travel that means we have a right to travel using the technology available today.

Are you saying that it was okay to say to a medieval peasant, "Sure, you can travel wherever you want. But you have no right to use a horse or a cart to carry yourself or your stuff. You can only travel with what you can carry on your back and in your hands"?

Yes, there are going to be times that even these "unalienable" rights have to be infringed in the name of some larger good. But not willy-nilly, and not just because there's some abstract policy interest in "safety". You want to modify a right stated in the Constitution, you have a really big burden of proof, bigger than just getting a majority in Congress, bigger than just some executive order. And, IMO, if you want to restrain a right that exists even without the Constitution, you have an even bigger one.

Signed,
In Agreement With Thomas Paine

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life liberty and pursuit of happiness. correct it is not in the constitution. It is in the declaration of independence.

We have the right to travel, that doesn't mean we have the right to drive, driving is a privilege, flying is a privilege.

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I agree, there certainly are rights that aren't included in the Constitution - as you said, LIFE, LIBERTY, and PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. The key point, though, is there is a hierarchy of rights - I hope you would agree with that - with LIFE being at the top of the hierarchy, followed closely by LIBERTY. The thing is, without Security foiling the terrorist events perpetrated by our enemies, those two - LIFE and LIBERTY, arguably the most important of the rights we have - are seriously jeopardized. Would you agree with that? If so, then why is it so bad to compromise a few things which probably fall short of even being rights - not waiting in line, not being scanned, etc. - in order to preserve the top two or three of the hierarchy?

What's that old saying about a tree that fails to bend in the storm getting broken?

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