And the next step… You have to wonder – what’s next?

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Written By Phil Brennan

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When a would-be dictator wants to rein in the rights of the citizenry one of the first steps he needs to take is restricting the public’s right to travel. The ability to move around freely within your nation’s borders is the ability to congregate with like-minded individuals all across your country who share you views, one of which may be opposition to the ruling powers.

The right to travel is a fundamental right in any nation that is free and wants to remain free. Restrict that right and you restrict one of the fundamental rights of  the citizens of a constitutional republic.

 

Columnist Devvy Kidd has noted the court findings in the case of United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 757, 86 S.Ct. 1170, 1178 (1966) which held that “The right to travel is a part of the ‘liberty’ of which the citizen cannot be deprived without the due process of law under the Fifth Amendment …The constitutional right to travel from one State to another, and necessarily to use the highways and other instrumentalities of interstate commerce in doing so, occupies a position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union.”

 

Thanks to such rulings, a president who desires to prevent citizens from moving freely within their nation’s borders and thus free to provoke and spread opposition to his policies, has something of a problem.

 

If he wants to stop the people who are free to go where and when they choose to go, he needs to do it in small steps. Like the frog placed in water which is gradually heated toward the boiling point and death the people’s rights must be restricted step-by-step.

 

Looked at from this perspective the new thuggish pre-boarding procedures which under any circumstances must be seen as an assault on the fundamental rights of privacy enshrined in Roe v. Wade are  just a first step in restricting the right to travel.

 

What’s next? How about a requirement that the traveling citizen explain where he or she is going and why they are going there?

 

Sound outlandish? As outlandish, say, as the federal government asserting the right to subject the citizenry to what amounts to unreasonable search and seizure, something specifically prohibited by the U.S. Constitution?

 

Just where in the world did the president find a right to authorize his government’s minions to perform intimate searches  that among other things involves what we youngsters used to call “feeling up” an unwilling female, and moreover doing to male and female alike in public for all to see?

 

Of course it is all explained to us dupes that such extreme measures are needed to prevent would-be terrorists from sneaking explosive devices aboard designed to bring down a plane in mid-flight.

 

Prevent it? Do they really think that terrorists highly trained to do their work are dumb enough to try to sneak explosives through an airport pre-boarding procedure? Look, if they can’t do it one way, they can finds a dozen other ways to do it. And they will.

I’m sorry, but I simply can’t believe that these new scan and search procedures are really meant to prevent terrorists from  bringing explosives aboard. They are not that stupid and the people carrying out the newest anti-terrorism programs damn well know they aren’t.

 

That being the case the administration’s newest anti-terrorist project must have motives other than simply the prevention of terrorists carrying explosives from boarding a plane.

 

So what we are left with is a solid suspicion that the whole shebang has been instituted for another reason – discouraging the most popular form of long and short distance travel – flight aboard an airline plane.

 

It really doesn’t matter if it is intentional or not, the effect is the same. The right to travel freely by air within our borders is  being made conditional upon our willingness to submit to an unlawful form of search and seizure.

 

You have to wonder – what’s next?
Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”

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