We don’t agree with most of what Senator Rand Paul stands for, but we agree wholeheartedly with his stand for liberty and personal freedom this morning in Nashville. It is being reported that Paul, the son of Texas congressman and Republican
presidential candidate Ron Paul, refused an “enhanced pat-down” by TSA agents after setting off a full body scanner. Ron Paul confirmed his son had been detained for refusing to be groped in a tweet “My son @SenRandPaul being detained by TSA for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner in Nashville. More details coming”
We have known people who have been forced to undergo this procedure(in one case a pregnant woman singled out for wearing “baggy clothes”) and it was uniformly described as invasive and offensive. Furthermore, there is no evidence that it has added to airplane safety. The framers of the constitution understood that “unreasonable search and seizure” could make us safer, but that it would not make us freer, and they decided wisely that it was better to be free and unafraid. We would do well to restore these freedoms that have been usurped by an agency whose mission has crept further and further afield without any further legislative oversight. The TSA’s job is to stop terrorism. Not to stop drugs, not to find weapons, not to find cash. When the agency is either disbanded, or forced to focus on its core mission, we will all be both safer and more free. It’s time for a grass-roots movement like the successful anti-SOPA movement to begin to remove this blemish on our great country’s record of liberty.
