Conservatives Share Blame for TSA's 'Freedom Fondle' | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary

Conservatives Share Blame for TSA's 'Freedom Fondle' | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary: "But when every bungled attack — no matter how inept — gets the screeching siren treatment on Drudge, what do you expect that political dynamic to produce? Sober, sensible policy?"

"when prominent conservatives brush off constitutional concerns with the bromide 'the Constitution is not a suicide pact,' (or, as Mitt Romney put it in 2007, 'Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive') is it so surprising that liberty and dignity get sent to the back of the line?

Like it or not, we live in the world the alarmists have made.

Yet, in reality, we're remarkably safe. In 2009, terrorists caused just 25 U.S. noncombatant fatalities worldwide. That's 25 too many, but 'existential,' it's not.

My colleague Jim Harper points out that, since 9/11, 'in 99 million domestic flights, transporting 7 billion people, precisely zero domestic travelers have snuck an underpants bomb onto a plane. (The one that we have seen — which did not work — came from overseas.)'

Surely the existence of the TSA — hapless and bureaucratic as they are — deters some potential bombers. Even so, the agency won't — likely can't — identify a single genuine terrorist they've caught, and it's not at all clear, according to the Government Accountability Office, that even the nude machine would have exposed the Christmas bomber.

We're safe — but not perfectly safe. Hyping and politicizing the terrorist threat won't deliver us perfect safety. Nothing can. But, as we're learning, it can put us on the path toward a society that no longer looks like America — one where you're endlessly prodded and poked — and ordered not to joke about the poking."