Originally Posted by Jim in CT
"That is the company's inalienable right to its property..."
The airline doesn't own the space above my house where it flies the plane. Therefore, I have no problem with the feds telling airlines that they have to take precautions before they take to the skies.
Who "owns" the space above your house, and how high up is it owned. Are there any international and free levels? Are you saying the Federal government owns the space. And it's quite a leap from "The airline doesn't own the space" to "I have no problem with the feds telling airlines . . ." What is the connection between the airlines not owning the space to the gvt. telling them what to do? Under the premise that airlines not owning the space gives the gvt. power to tell them what precautions they must take, what is it that the government cannot demand the airlines do? Do you own that space above your house? Remember, there is a difference between space and atmosphere. Since the space is above your house, it is certain that you are in various ways entering that space with every breath you breath or car you drive or cigarette you smoke, or in so many innumerable ways. Does this give gvt. the power to make you do as it wishes? Do you believe that market competition is a more effective driving economic force than government regulation? Haven't airlines taken many "precautions" without being told by government to do so?
If an airline doesn't ant to put security measures into place, that endangers all of us.
I think JohnnyD's point about the "rabbit hole" of totalitarian like gvt. leading to every citizen being treated like a terrorist, exagerated as it is (you do understant hyperbole, right?) stems from security measures being directed at citizens rather than actual terrorists. Rather than the government constitutionally protecting us from terrorists by securing borders, cooperating with States to find and deport aliens, and demanding the exportation of those whose visas have expired, keeping tabs on all who are here for temporary purposes, and, most importantly, taking the so-called war on terror to those places where they reside, hide, and breed, in an all-out war of actual annihilation or surrender of the enemies . . . rather than that, we impose security measures at home. Half wars like Viet-Nam, Desert Storm, temporary occupations, counter insurgencies from a distance, and avoidence of collateral damage, don't seem to stop determined adversaries. Crush them totally in the first instance, rather than imposing bunker mentality regulations on our own people. The Afghanistan war should have been a quick and massive destruction with the understood and expressed threat that this is what you will get if you harbor those that kill us.
I see a lot of things that scare me out there, most of them economic in nature, because I'm a numbers guy. But not many safety measures that are part of the war on terror, worry me. I only worry that we aren't going far enough in the name of political correctness.
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