Patriot Update

The TSA procedures are costly, overly intrusive, and highly inconvenient to the millions of passengers subjected to them. But how have they managed to make us less  safe? Well, by persuading a great many of us to avoid the inconvenience and indignities at the airports by doing our holiday and other traveling in the most dangerous places in the world — the American highways.

“To make flying as dangerous as using a car,” Kenny wrote, “a four-plane disaster on the scale of 9/11 would have to occur every month, according to analysis published in the American Scientist. Researchers at Cornell University estimate that people switching from air to road transportation in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks led to an increase of 242 driving fatalities per month — which means that a lot more people died on the roads as an indirect result of 9/11 than died from being on the planes that terrible day.”

Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Perhaps we should worry all the more when “helpful” agents of the federal government are here to make us safer.