The price of freedom

 

What have I done?

This was my thought as the gloved hands of a Transportation Security Agent traveled up one side of my body and down the other. She was giving me “The Pat-Down.”

After a nice visit with my daughter and her family, I was flying home through St. Louis’s Lambert Field.

Going through the security check, I followed directions like everyone else. My shoes were off and personal belongings were undergoing the X-ray machine.

True—I had been complaining, along with the people in front and behind me, of the ridiculousness of this whole process but nobody could hear us through the din of several hundred shuffling people. Besides, as American citizens, we had the First Amendment right to free speech.

Suddenly I was pulled out of line by a grim-faced female agent.

“Step this way please,” she ordered.

“Why?” I asked, astounded. I had assumed that since I was in the metal detector line, I had successfully avoided the body scan machine and also this confrontation.

“To go through the body scanner.”

Okay, Joan, I muttered inwardly, time to stand up for your rights.

“I’m not doing that,” I said.

“Opt Out!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

All eyes turned my way to see the nut refusing to take the body scan.

This should be interesting, I thought as a uniformed woman, substantial enough to pick me up and fling me across the room, approached and asked me to follow her.

“What about my things?” I pointed to my purse, shoes and jacket languishing in plastic containers at the end of the X-ray machine counter. There was no way I was going to be parted from my credit cards and boarding passes.

When the agent said that she would carry my belongings with us, but I should under no circumstances touch them, I wanted to protest. Why wasn’t I allowed to touch my own property when it had just passed through the X-ray machine?

But I bit my tongue and decided to pick my fight carefully. Refusing the body scan was enough for one day.

So I followed Ms. TSA agent across the room.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that being patted down denies my right as an American citizen against unreasonable searches and seizures as much as does the body scan with one exception.

The body scanner emits radiation and it should be my personal right to accept radiation or not.

I decided to chat with the agent as she violated my personal space. “Why was I picked for the scanner?”

She told me it was random, adding that she personally would go through the scanner, it was much easier.

“Well I wouldn’t.” I said. “There’s the radiation.”

“No more than you’ll get on any plane flight,” she countered.

“Yes, who needs more radiation?” I responded.

She continued the patting as we talked.

“I’m a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen,” I told her.

“So am I,” she said, her hands patting down my arms.

“And our government should not be doing this to either one of us, I answered.

People who had been standing in line with me smiled as they walked past, and I did some eye rolling.

There was a time in my life when I would not have protested as I was now doing, believing that national security was more important than personal liberties, that everything authorities said was correct.

But not anymore.

So I stood there, probably looking more like a crazy old lady than I ever wanted.

Though the “pat-down” should have made me feel humiliated, I felt good about doing it, rather than acquiescing to the demands of the Transportation Security Agency.

I didn’t exactly feel free but freer. If looking like a batty old lady was the price of freedom, I was happy to pay it.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin