I have a different explanation for how we got here.
For nearly a decade, Krauthammer, Santorum and too many others on the Right have relentlessly hyped and politicized the terrorist threat. 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?
Conservatives could stand to think more clearly about ideas and consequences, cause and effect. Take last week’s comments from Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., a congressional father of the agency: “When the TSA was established, it was never envisioned that it would become a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy.”
Really, who could have known?
And 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.
Yes, we most certainly do live in that world, thanks to George W. Bush, Richard “Dick” Cheney, and all the other Republican fearmongers who thrive on stoking fear and anger, while overriding fundamental American values of liberty. Once again, heckuva job by the Republicans. And in this case, thank goodness for the libertarians!
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