Will Trading Rights For "Freedom" Keep The U.S. Safe? No - But Racial Profiling Just Might

Ladies and gentlemen, I just heard one of the most ridiculous, not to mention stupid things I've ever heard. While watching "Cavuto" on Fox News, famed former New York Police Department detective Bo Dietl, commenting on the judge ruling the "no fly list" unconstitutional, actually said - and I quote - "In order to have freedom, you have to have some of your rights taken away." No, I'm not making that up.


I'm sorry, but wouldn't the taking of our unalienable rights be diametrically opposite the very definition of freedom? Mr. Dietl, you might have been a "legend" as a police officer, but in this case, you're dead wrong. Restricting the freedoms of everyone in order to have the possibility of catching a would-be terrorist isn't worth the price we'll all eventually pay. Do the Patriot Act and NSA spying mean anything to you?


Think about this for a few minutes: The TSA has yet to catch a single terrorist. There are multiple reasons why, but here's at least one good reason for that - and this part is somewhat important - 90-year-old grandfathers and 5-year-old toddlers aren't likely to be terrorists! You want to know who is most likely to be a terrorist - a young Arab muslim male. *G*A*SP* If that shocks you, you haven't been paying attention to the world for, oh, the last four decades or more, which makes you part of the problem.


Why doesn't the TSA single out Arab muslim men? That's easy - political correctness. Nobody wants to bring up a certain dreaded phrase anymore, but the truth is, so-called "racial profiling" actually works. Yeah, I said it.


Crime statistics show that a certain person, in a certain place, at a certain time of day or night, is most likely committing crime "X" - whatever that may be. Racial profiling is applicable to all ethnicities, by the way. Does it mean that every person of whatever ethnicity actually is committing "X" if they're in that certain place at that certain time? Absolutely not, but statistically, the chances are very high that they are.


For example, if we look at the number of homicides committed in the United States between 1974 and 2004, 52% of offenders were black and 46% were white. Seems pretty equal, right? The kicker is that blacks made up only 12% of the total population during this time period, while whites made up 80%. It's difficult to argue against those kind of numbers, isn't it? Keep these numbers in mind when reading the next paragraph.


Psychologists use a test called the "Implicit Association Test" to test for bias in people. Once used to investigate race bias, participants of the test were asked to match up "good" and "bad" words with pictures of black or white faces.  A majority of white participants made associations of "good" with white faces and "bad" with black faces. Care to guess how the black participants scored? Well, the black participants did the same thing.  Even black people use racial profiling when dealing with members of their own race.


After 9/11, the United Stated government was quick to point out that not all muslims are terrorists, and that is certainly true, at least as it pertains to the active activism of most muslims. It is also true that not all terrorists are muslim, but in terms of international terrorism of the type that occurred on September 11, 2001, the actors are almost invariably younger, unmarried, muslim males.


Before people misunderstand, I'm absolutely not saying we should profile muslim men strictly because they are muslim. Being a muslim, however, should certainly be part of the equation, along with as many similarities shared with the 9/11 hijackers as possible. It's not that difficult a concept to grasp.


As for Bo Dietl and his inane comment - the only rights I intend to give up are exactly NONE, sir. We have given up far too many as it is, and the federal government has abrogated its responsibility to safeguard those rights in favor of violating those rights on an almost daily basis. You may be okay with that, Mr. Dietl, but a great many of us are not, and we're growing stronger every day. ~ Hunter