A people's approach to national security recognizes that reality and extends it beyond the airliner, restoring the moral authority of the citizen to police his nation's borders and serve as the first and final line of defense against terror
Two recent incidents, a tweeted photo of TSA agents examining a baby and a man shouting pounding on a cockpit door while shouting "Allah Akbar" being subdued by passengers, remind us of the absurd fictions of airline security. The biggest fiction of airline security is that it is secure. The second biggest fiction is that it is even meant to be secure.
The TSA and its naked scanners don't exist to provide security, but to provide plausible deniability when an attack does happen. It was created to answer the question "Why did you let 9/11 happen". And the answer is if something happens again, this time we did everything we could short of poking sharp objects into passengers orifices or profiling Muslim as potential terrorists. But the TSA's breast milk and baby follies are a side effect of a law enforcement culture which is less concerned with public safety, than it is with public order. Where public safety works to identify threats, public order concentrates on enforcing the rules. Public safety looks for the wolf in the fold, public order treats everyone like the wolf.
