The Transportation Safety Administration has announced that it is going to get even more aggressive with innocent passengers. They said we must give up our liberty for security, but the TSA is an enemy of both. What can we do to fight back?
The Transportation Safety Administration has announced that it is going to get even more aggressive with innocent passengers. They said we must give up our liberty for security, but the TSA is an enemy of both. What can we do to fight back?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report with me today.
It's Daniel McAdams, the co-host.
Again, Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
Well, good.
I want to talk about the TSA, one of my least favorite organizations ever.
I did have the pleasure one time of voting against it, believing that it was unnecessary and misdirected.
It would be too expensive and all the problems.
But of course, that was in the hysteria after 9-11.
But we have a new president, and we're going to get new rules, new rules about the TSA.
And he doesn't like big government, you know, and he wants to root out all the evil up there.
So I thought, well, maybe these rules will be better.
But so far, what I read, there's not much good news in what I've been reading about.
It looks like it's going to get a lot worse for a lot more people.
Maybe the people will wake up and strike against this.
I wished I had the time and the energy too, because that is what is going to be necessary in order for us to ever retrieve some of our dignity that we lose by going through TSA.
So this announcement was made just recently.
I don't think it's gone into full effect, but right now it looks like things are not going to get better for the American people, and Liberty has not had a victory.
And from what I see in this movie, it's not like the move away against getting rid of regulations and adding one.
You add one, you get rid of two.
Well, I would like to say that all the regulations that thousands of regulations could make up for the regulations that we suffer from the TSA.
So hopefully the American people will wake up.
I'm going to try my best, and I'm sure you'll help to wake the American people up to how serious a matter this really is.
You know, Hannah Arendt's The Banality of Evil is such a great book, you know, and I always think of banality when I think of horrible organizations like this.
Here's the announcement that they made.
People who in the past would have gotten a pat down that wasn't involved will notice the new pat down is more involved.
And, you know, one place where the revolt may come from is it's going to be all employees, no matter whether you work there for 30 years and everybody knows you and you're a pilot, they're going to send, you know, they're going to be just as vulnerable now.
So even if all of them aren't involved, but a few, everybody ought to start standing up for the victims because this has nothing to do with safety.
It has to do with authoritarianism and have this club of government over the people and teaching people who are the victims and you will listen, you will obey, and you get a bunch of people involved there.
They get paid money to be authoritarians and push people around.
Something that probably they have suppressed throughout their life and now they're enjoying this job and I consider it very serious.
You know, ironically, and I guess this is how government always works, these more aggressive pat-downs are a response to their own failures.
Essentially, they're taking it out on us because you remember those studies not that long ago that showed 95% of the contraband got through and got past the TSA.
They completely failed at their jobs.
And so now they're taking it out on us by going to be more and more aggressive with their pat down.
Well, they turn that around and say they didn't do a good job.
That's why they have to be a lot tougher.
But I wonder how many times the things that they missed weren't really weapons.
They were probably set up by the government themselves and made it so that it was an excuse to do this.
But you know, the only way this kind of thing could happen is that people have to be very, very frightened.
And that is the name of the game, fear, build up fear, whether it's economic fear or security fear.
And it is there.
And 9-11 was the perfect thing for them to build up a fear.
And that justifies the spending.
And you can say anything, we're going to make you safe.
Government is here to make us safe and happy and secure.
And therefore, giving up liberty, that was what we heard after 9-11.
Giving up a little liberty to be safe is no big deal.
Well, if you understand it, it's totally unnecessary.
A recent statistic I just saw was that there are 12,000 murders per year in this country.
Horrible, horrible.
Inner city murders and gun killing and all these things.
But we hardly hear a word about it.
Terrorism, which is the motivation here, is stop the terrorists, stop the terrorists.
There's on the average since 9-11, nine terrorists killed in the United States per year.
Travel Restrictions and Liberty00:03:34
But everything is driven by this.
I mean, are they worried about the 12,000 getting killed, mostly in the inner city?
No, they don't have any concern about that, and they don't want to understand that.
But now they have to drive this terrorism so that they can justify all this.
And civil liberties is irrelevant.
They expect us to sacrifice civil liberties.
And we have the militarism that is a response to this.
And now, the emphasis that we're going to be talking about is travel, restrictions on travel.
And that is the excuse because everybody has to travel.
And therefore, I'm still traveling.
I traveled this weekend, and it wasn't a very happy experience.
It's getting worse and worse.
And the new rules aren't even in yet.
So the American people, maybe it'll backfire on them.
Maybe they ought to pat down everybody, you know, suffer everybody and put them through it.
I'll tell you one suggestion I have that would stop all this.
I think that we should have a movement started.
We need about 10 million people saying, Mr. President, if you're going to do this, we'd like to see you go as an ordinary citizen, stand in that line, fly on a commercial airline, stand on that line, and have a public pat down.
And I'll tell you what, if that doesn't wake him up, but nothing ever will, but that's what we need to do.
So anybody who would like that suggestion, send them a little note and say, you go through it once and see what it's like.
Let all your kids go through it.
So that to me would maybe wake up a couple people.
And it is sad because it has become the new normal.
You know, when it first came out, there were some protests.
People were upset.
But, you know, I flew last month with my son, and everyone just kind of droned through the scanner.
Nobody opted out.
Nobody wants to be the odd man out.
And my son was kind of happy.
He said, this is our one little form of protest that we can do is to opt out.
But they sure give it to you.
Talk about a wake-up call.
Now, one thing usually leads to another.
And this type of things make people fearful and this crossing borders and travel thing.
And I think right now we're moving toward the real ID card.
And that means more, everybody will be carrying their papers to go interstate and every place, get a job, whatever.
And that's what that is all about.
But, you know, rebelling, civil, nonviolent civil disobedience is a powerful tool.
You know, Martin Luther King knew about it and Gandhi knew about it.
And some people have already started.
One person I really admire, he's been on our show a couple times, somebody I've known for 30 years, and that's Walter Williams.
And he's a famous Austrian free market speaker and still does teaching.
And he gets requests.
Told me he gets requests for speeches.
And he said, not coming.
I'd love to do it.
But if you send me an airplane, I'll come, but I will not go through TSA.
So he has revolted, and he says he's not going to do it.
And it's just too bad that a few of us aren't that ready to do that because everybody, business people, but maybe technology will help solve this problem.
Maybe the business people will go on strike and just say, look, we'll do our meeting over the intercom, you know, over telemarketing, you know, teleprompters and things like that, and do it electronically just to make it certain.
The other thing that bothers me to no end is the airlines like this kind of stuff.
TSA Revolt Not Enough00:07:27
They didn't want the liability.
They were passing TSA.
They didn't want the liability.
They wanted the government to be in charge.
Of course, it was the government being in charge before 9-11 that told people they couldn't resist and all kinds of rules.
The pilots weren't allowed to have guns and they set this stage.
So they're in collusion.
So the airlines, because it is so well controlled by government, they're really part of the government.
But in a free society where property is important, there's so many thousands of places in this country, chemical plants on down, that need protection.
Banks need protection.
And it's usually done by private individuals that do this.
But no, this has to be government, and this has to be monolithic.
This has to be done by people that are completely uninterested in protecting liberty and that they'll use any amount of force to do what they think they should do.
What's sad as a younger generation is growing up now that will never know what it was like to not have this horrible restrictions and invasive procedures.
But I remember at the time when we were having the debates, and you had a very simple solution.
If there's a problem with security on the planes, you had a very good solution.
Arm the pilots on the planes.
Yeah, we wrote a little resolution, and that would have solved it.
And they could have put a tough door up there, armed the pilots, and that would have been it.
And even now, they're not armed because they made it so onerous and so regulated that it was virtually impossible to get the permit to protect your own property.
But they were protecting the people.
That would have been something that could have been done perfectly.
And which airline wants to kill their customers?
You know, they've got the incentive.
The airlines have the incentives to be much more security conscious than some government employee.
Well, I think the biggest, well, the biggest problem is that the people, you know, fall for this building up of the fear and that terrorism is going to get us and they have to capitulate and they're too compliant.
So as long as the people are compliant and complacent about this, and I have to say, I've been way too compliant.
And I do it.
I just don't want to have to, you know, you just don't have the energy to fight it.
And you know, you're up against thousands of guns.
You know, and I mentioned to you once that I said, look, you know, they had, I don't know if we had that picture up there, but a teenager, you know, 15, 16 year old, and they're doing all this stuff, pushing their hand down his pants.
What if the kid had a normal reaction and just went, boom, like that, and hit the guy?
He would have been a criminal for the rest of his life.
He would have been incarcerated.
His life would have been totally destroyed for him to act naturally in self-defense.
Anything that's going on at these airports, if that was done outside of the airport, these inspectors would be the criminals.
But no, we become the criminals because we want to defend ourselves.
It's really a sad situation.
Well, I remember when all this was coming out, we got so many letters from constituents, thousands of letters from people who did not want this.
And my guess is that those letters have kind of tapered off.
And that's unfortunate because I think if people really are upset about the TSA, they can write to the congressman.
If you get 100 letters in your office on any day on a topic, you're going to go take it to the boss and say, here's a problem.
Right.
And I think that's what should be done.
Yes.
It's hard to get the attention of members of Congress.
But when they really are upset, they will get the attention.
I think right now we're at a point.
We can't win this in the courts.
We're not going to win it with the new administration.
It's not going to happen.
The war on terrorism or the pseudo-war on terrorism is going to continue.
The foreign policy isn't going to change.
But if the American people would only see the light that this is just a violation of liberty, and as you pointed out, that there are other ways that private airlines could take care of this.
There shouldn't be a TSA.
There wasn't a TSA when it was private property and before 9-11.
But I think your suggestion is perfect.
Yeah, the system is bad, but it will work.
If they can get not hundreds, they need to get thousands, if not millions, of phone calls and say, enough is enough.
And maybe it'll get the attention of the Congress because that's what they care about.
You know, they're tippy-toeing around now.
How does a Republican act?
Do I support Trump or don't I support him Trump?
Do I stand up against him or do I capitulate?
Well, there's times when they shouldn't capitulate.
And I think that they should stand up in the American, but it won't happen if the American people don't speak out.
It'll continue.
This thing is going to get worse.
It is going to expand.
And if we take this expansion of this thugginess of the TSA, it's going to be more difficult than ever.
And it wouldn't be that hard.
The airlines can provide protection.
We do it in thousands and thousands of different places still in this country where important buildings and chemical plants are protected by private groups.
I mean, you don't depend on the local police to protect the chemical plants.
So just have a little, people need a little bit more faith and confidence.
Quit sacrificing liberty for safety.
And people were so annoying to me when they said, oh, that's not right.
You've got to sacrifice liberty.
You've got to, because you've got to be safe.
And if you're not safe, how can you do this?
Well, how can you be a person?
How can you have any dignity if you have to stand there and go through these kind of pat dunes?
They are so insulting.
And like I said earlier, I think people, if you feel energetic, go ahead, get people stirred up, and let's see if we can get the president go if he even went and watched it for a while, if he watched the video.
And of course, I don't know if they do, but they should video every pat down.
And it should be available to the individual if he wants to see it and use it and say, look, you've overstepped your bounds.
But right now, there are no bounds.
There haven't been any bounds.
It looks like the bounds are even going to be weakened even more so.
We should definitely revisit this topic because I think it's such an important topic.
It really is a key issue for liberty.
Well, it is.
As long as the TSA exists and continue to expand, there can be no liberty.
It is dramatically the issue of overly oppressive government, a complacent electorate that goes along with it and won't stand up for it because they don't understand the basic principle.
It's your life and it's your property.
If you haven't done any harm, they don't have a right to do this to you and assume that you are a criminal.
If they want to treat you like a criminal, they ought to have due process.
They can't assume that you might be and treat you like a criminal and you can't resist.
Other than that, I would say that the only recourse we have now is call your congressman and give them an earful.
That's what they need to wake them up because what's coming is not going to be very friendly to the American people and is not going to be very friendly to Liberty.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to this Liberty Report.