Your Papers, please

It would appear that the terrorists are winning in the grand city of New York. No, there have been no attacks, and the city of New York is still something approaching a democracy, but apparently the rulers of NYC have decided to forgo the 4th Amendment. This rape of the Constitution has provoked little outrage, anywhere. Perry has a good post on the subject over at Eidelblog.

But what I'm writing about today is even worse. On Sunday afternoon, a bus in New York was stormed by a SWAT team, 5 people were detained, and all 60 people on the bus were searched. (link) Surely, there must be somewhat of a reasonable explanation for this; there was intel of an impending attack, one of the passengers was a known terrorists, something? No, the reason for the hubbub was that a bus company supervisor had her suspicions "raised" when five passengers with "stuffed" pockets and backpacks got on the bus. So, in this country, it is now acceptable for the police to barge onto a bus carrying assault rifles (weapons that ordinary citizens can't be "trusted" with) and search everyone because 5 passengers were carrying burritos in their pockets and had backpacks?

I don't even know what to say.

People, wise up! This is exactly what "they" want. They want us to give in to the terror, to the possibility of "something" happening, to the point where we give up our liberty to obtain security. And as Ben Franklin said, if we reach that point, we deserve neither.

It is quite simple, really. It is impossible to secure mass transit in an open society. The only way to secure them is to institute security that is so time intensive as to defeat the purpose of mass transit. So, instead of admitting this fact, we are instituting half-assed measures that do nothing except infringe on our freedoms, all in the name of security.

We have two options: either continue down this road of "heightened security" and give up our liberty without obtaining any real security, or refuse to give in. Refuse these intrusive, pointless, ineffective measures. Refuse to be afraid. Tell the terrorists that we are coming for you, and we will kill you, but until then, we refuse to change our lifestyles around you. You have changed nothing.

As an aside, it is interesting to note what the ACLU has done in response to this. Perry points it out in his post. They've blathered on about Constitutional violations, but have done nothing of substance, such as filing suit. Interesting to note where their apparent loyalties lie. Here is a cut and dried case of civil liberties being violated, and the ACLU is nowhere to be found. But the Pentagon supports the Boy Scouts once every four years, and it is a federal court case.