James Joyner isn’t so much disagreeing with the premise that conservatives endorse infringements on personal liberty as long as they don’t have to pay the price as he is justifying it:
I think waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed was not only legally and morally questionable but unnecessary and likely counterproductive. But I can understand why President Bush and Vice President Cheney might think otherwise. Regardless, he’s, to a virtual certainty, a terrorist and mass murderer. Conversely, those people being subjected to the indignities of the TSA are, to an even higher degree of certainty, American citizens under zero suspicion of a crime.
Similarly, one needn’t be a racist or a reactionary to think that different levels of scrutiny ought be applied to Muslim males between the ages of 25 and 35 than to Hispanic toddlers or Jewish grandmothers when screening for potential terrorists. “Profiling” based on race, gender, or ethnicity alone, naturally, would be not only unlawful but stupid. But it makes sense to limit one’s attention to those who are plausibly suspects.
There’s only one KSM, but hundreds of people have been imprisoned at Gitmo for years and subsequently been released without charge. Perhaps the “strong certainty” justifies Sami El-Hajj‘s seven year imprisonment without being charged for a crime? Or the similar amount of time Mohamed Jawad was subject to imprisonment based on a confession the Afghan police beat out of him? Or Mahar Arar being sent to Syria to be tortured? After all, those actions were all based on such “strong suspicions.”
The indignities of a TSA search are frankly mild compared to this stuff. That doesn’t make them justifiable. But my point was that as long as we aren’t personally paying the price of security, terrible things become all the more easy to approve of.
