The Department of Homeland Security and the TSA are not satisfied with treating Americans like pieces of meat, or like printer cartridges, or prison inmates. It is compiling a database of everyone who opposes the new procedures, that is, anyone who has written anything whatsoever critical of the DHS and TSA, and whose words may cause others to oppose or “disrupt” the assembly line.
[...]
And to take what action? As I remarked to a friend, a government agency does not draw up a “watch list” without purpose, unless it claims and reserves the option of taking some form of action against the individuals and organizations on that list. The agency assumes it has the power to act. Otherwise, such a list is pointless. As individuals can identify unconstitutional actions taken by the government, the government will identify those who make such an identification – and has the power to punish them.
[...]
The TSA’s policy is simply to ignore and overrule the Fourth Amendment, and to resort to brute force. This is what it regularly tells travelers who question the policy. It and the DHS will sooner or later decide to ignore and overrule the First Amendment, or freedom of speech. It can claim that my writing – or anyone else’s writing, no matter how calmly or emotionally composed – has caused others to oppose or “disrupt” the TSA’s policies. Whether the actions of those so inspired or so persuaded are criminal in nature, or lawful actions taken under the mantle of the Fourth Amendment, is irrelevant.
[...]
The threat implied in that directive is there are certain individuals and organizations that must sooner or later be silenced. Patrick Henry spoke his immortal “liberty or death” speech in Richmond in 1775, when the Virginia Assembly held its session away from Williamsburg, then the capital, because the royal governor there had the power to prorogue or dismiss that assembly by directive or by brute force. Today, no one can speak from a safe distance. Miles cannot serve as a guarantee of freedom of speech. We are no longer beyond the arm’s length of government coercion, but a mere keyboard. Our best protection is to speak out, and often, and to either force the hand of DHS and TSA, or cause them to back off.
The First Amendment is in more serious jeopardy than one might have previously imagined. Do not cave in to the TSA’s “conditioning” to make your silence a measure of normalcy. The government’s intention is to inure Americans to living in a state of obedient and submissive servitude. Of existing and acting by permission.
