The 1998 movie Star Trek: Insurrection explores the idea that governments should never violate individual rights simply because the purported benefits to “society” outweigh the liberty of a handful of people who lack political connections. That the filmmakers projected this would still be a problem in the 24th century suggests we have quite a bit of work to do here back in the 21st century.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the hero of Insurrection, defies an order from his commander, Admiral Matthew Dougherty, to withdraw from a planet that their government — the Federation — has “given” to an alien species called the Son’a. The Son’a, a cross between Objectivists and a pharmaceutical company, want to develop an “eternal youth” drug from the radiation that envelops the planet, and they’ve promised to share this new product with the Federation (no doubt after the Federation subjects it to clinical trials and awards the Son’a a patent).
The problem is that another group, the Ba’ku, already live on the planet, in a small village of about 600 individuals. The Son’a can’t harness the radiation — and develop their drug — without killing all life on the planet. The Son’a, for reasons not relevant to my discussion here, would be happy to simply kill the Ba’ku, but Admiral Dougherty steps in and devises a plan to forcibly relocate the villagers without their knowledge. Captain Picard stumbles onto the plan and confronts the admiral, protesting his plan “is an attack on the very soul of the Federation” and notes that forced relocation “will destroy the Ba’ku, just as other cultures have been destroyed in every other forced relocation throughout history.”
Dougherty rationalizes, as any bureaucrat would, “We are only moving six hundred people, Jean-Luc.” Picard doesn’t back down: “How many people would it take … before it becomes wrong? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million?”
Picard’s question is something we should ask all those who reject individual rights in favor of some form of statism: How many people must lose their property, liberty, or lives before you’ll concede that the state and its policies are wrong?
There are a nearly infinite number of examples one could cite, but let’s stick with the subject of the day: the Transportation Security Administration’s illegal searches and sexual assaults against innocent air travelers. Every hour brings a new horror story: a child kidnapped from her mother’s arms, a cancer survivor forced to cover himself in urine, a small boy strip searched, and so on. At the present rate of these attacks and public backlash,
And yet I suspect a majority of Americans still passively approve of the TSA. ABC News, a good arm of the state, tried to douse the flames with this appeal to majoritarian impulses:
Only a small number of travelers have been subject to pat-downs, officials say. The White House says roughly 340,000 people — or 1 percent of all travelers — have been subjected to more intense searches since the new TSA procedures began Nov. 1.
So it’s just 1 percent. Who wouldn’t accept the brutal violation of the rights of such a small percentage in exchange for the greater good of “security” in air travel? The other 99 percent apparently.
The Los Angeles Times, another arm of the state, said travelers should just “shut up and be scanned.” Radley Balko of Reason wondered if the Times would have said the same thing about the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II, another false act of state “security” designed to prey on public fear. Lo and behold, Balko tweeted, the Times in the 40s offered exactly that endorsement. Some things never change.
Forced relocation, of course, brings us back to the scenario presented in Insurrection. At least in the movie the object of the statists’ desire — an eternal youth drug — was presented as scientifically valid. In contrast, there is no validity to the notion that random assaults of airline passengers do anything to secure airplanes from terrorist attack. The TSA’s policies are simply more welfare for our beleaguered bureaucratic class who need the security of lifetime employment in a hostile, anti-free market society.
Of course, the concept of “eternal youth” is an apt metaphor for the “security” promised by the TSA. It’s an impossible, unattainable goal that distracts the masses from focusing on the reality of what’s really going on — an attack on the very soul of our society, as Captain Picard would say. The only question for those who continue to cling to the TSA and its false promises of eternal youth are, How many people will have to be violated and humiliated … before the TSA and its policies become wrong?
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I sent an email to the port authority here in Portland, OR and some of the airlines. In short, I expressed my desire to quit flying altogether and how this could be a disaster for their business… not to mention the degrading nature of these new scans and “pat-downs”. Both replies were bureaucratic and corporate drivel. PDX referred to it as “advanced imaging technology”. Orwell has left the building!
It’s clear that their “customer service” representatives are trained to act politically, rather than respond to customers and signals from the market. Also, for all intents and purposes it’s clear that TSA has taken over their airport operations. TSA isn’t what drives the business, but they’re the boss. It’s like they’re taking air passengers for granted and this whole thing will just blow over eventually. I hope they’re wrong about that.
I s’pose in summary that notion that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” should be reworded as “prevention is a Statist gimmick to invade the rights of innocent people to allegedly protect them from extremely rare disasters”.
Any post that describes a group as “a cross between Objectivists and a pharmaceutical company” is a winner in my book. Awesome! P.S. Was Riker with or without beard?
As an Objectivist I strongly object to this description. The Son’a are directly violating a core tenet of Objectivism which is that no one may initiate the use of force against another. Other than that this is a good piece.
The movie was confusing as Picard had no problem relocating people in TNG because the Federation ordered it.
Ah, good point, the episode where Wesley Crusher leaves to “study” with The Traveler.
“How many people must lose their property, liberty, or lives before you’ll concede that the state and its policies are wrong?”
The late Harry Browne would have said one. (Suppose that one person is you.)
Unfortunately, catchphrases and sound bytes carry the day in our “political debates.” There is no reasoned discussion, just “Enhanced pat downs” and “Advanced Imaging Technology.” Since libertarians are usually better equipped to make an actual argument than to coin a pithy phrase, we often find ourselves standing on the outside of these discussions talking to each other. Instead, let’s play along:
My (probably weak) effort: (if you can do better, do better)
Porno Cancer Box. n. A machine which delivers radiation to the skin, and to a lesser extent, other organs of the human body in order to produce nude photographs of the human subject, and which, against the claims of its makers, can store and disseminate these photos.
Rape. n. An act of physical aggression through which the assailant touches, handles, or does worse, to the male or female genitals and female breasts of a human without that human’s free consent. This crime is often considered especially heinous when committed by an authority figure as a condition of the continuing good pleasure of that figure.
There is no reason to skirt the issue simply because it is uncomfortable to talk about. And I certainly do not mean to be flippant or disrespectful to people who are raped by assailants not dressed in a TSA costume. I’m completely serious. If you get nuked while having your genitals photographed, call it what it is. “I was sexually exploited and possibly injured at the airport today.” If you also, or instead, are groped by a stranger as a condition of passing by, call it what it is. “I was raped at the airport today.”
Play the language game. Just do it better and more truthfully than the TSA and the windbags on TV.
How about ‘porno cancer camera’ instead. Maybe somebody could make up a cartoon or a CG animation showing Nazis walking around randomly taking naked pictures of everybody. You could tie the cancer risk into state run health care with people standing in line.
I call the scanners a number of names. Rapescan. Porno-scanner. Porno-tron. Nucleo-junk scan. Naked cancer box. Radioactive nudie device. Porno-nucleo-tron. Pervert scan.
The disgusting and illegal searches: Perverted search. Grope session. Sexual assault pat-down. Insane petting. Touchy feely exploration. Molestation. Sexploitation search. Junk fondling.
The TSA itself: Thugs Sexually Assaulting. Theatrical Scumbag Abusers. Thorough Sexual Assault. Thuggin’ Scandalously Aggressively. Tragic Sexual Aggressiveness. Touching Senselessly Agency. Twisted Sexual Abusers. Tourism Sabotage Agency.
We should be calling it child pornography. That’s what this “Advanced Imaging Technology” is.
This administration should be up on CP charges.
I took a minute to check these “enhanced pat downs” against state law here in Tennessee. If I could convince a judge that there was a “reasonable possibility” that the TSA agents were obtaining sexual gratification from the pat down, the act would be what we call “aggravated sexual battery,” without question. Is this stuff plainly illegal in anyone else’s state?
If I was in the same situation as that woman who had her kid taken by the TSA douchebag, I’d probably be in prison or lying on the airport floor with holes in my body.
The purpose of nude body scans is nude body scans; the purpose of groping is groping; the purpose of power is power…. (with apologies to George Orwell who warned us about this.)
Time to seek out and utilize air travel options not affected by TSA B.S. — things like charter, local private pilots, small regional airlines that have structured their ops to avoid as much Federal B.S. as possible, etc… .
NOTE: Local private pilots can offer surprisingly affordable options and even private charter can be very affordable when done in groups. Another option (if you fly alot) is to get together with a local private pilot, and some friends, and set up a group ownership arrangement of an aircraft that meets most of the group’s needs. Some recommended, affordable, capable aircraft: cessna 206, cessna 210, cessna caravan, king air 100, and the king air 200 (most, especially non-aviator types, will be happiest with the caravan and king air aircraft).
Interesting. There’s a good privately owned airport only a few miles from me. Do you think it will be long before the TSA catches on and tries to infect the private sector as well?
1%…really? Since 2001 I have flown 5 times. I was selected for additional screening 4 times…groped each of the 4 times. The odds are against this if the 1% selection is accurate. Also…really? Only 1%? If that is the case, that does nothing to prevent an attack. It does, however, enable our own government to terrorize us…at least 1% of us…1% of us who fly…guess we don’t matter. And it also allows the companies who more than doubled their investment in lobbying in the past 5 years to place their product (scanners) in airports. Yea for them, I guess.
No, the odds aren’t against it. You are assuming that the odds each time are independent, but you could get those 4 out of 5 results if it’s really a 1% chance of being a person who has characteristics that screeners look for, i.e. a 1% chance of being one of the few people who often get screened – since those characteristics night be fairly constant. That might involve unacknowledged personal profiling, but it might not if (for instance) it’s related to aspects of travel patterns (they might be saying something like “why would somebody be flying there after coming from there, at that time of day and that day of the week, when nobody we know of has business or personal reasons for journeys like that?”).
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