Bill, your observations on Progressives’ devotion to bureaucratic Big Brother explain a phenomenon in the mainstream media the last couple of days.
The Sikh Coalition introduced “an application for mobile devices Monday that allows airline passengers to report suspected discrimination at airport checkpoints.” It’s actually a bit broader than that: The app facilitates filing a complaint about any of the TSA’s atrocities.
The media is obsessed with this app. All but one of the stories my Google Alert for TSA kicked up Monday hyped it; half of them did so yesterday. And why? Because it plays into the Progressive myth. Bureaucrats are benevolent, selfless deities there to help. On those rare instances when a few misguided ones savage us, administrative law provides a remedy: victims may appeal to the agency abusing them for redress. Since the bureaucratic judges are as fair-minded, warm, and loving as the agency’s other experts, they will of course administer justice [sic for “decide in the bureaucracy’s favor”].
Ergo, the new app will improve — not eliminate: heavens, no! — the government’s sexual assault as more citizens provide feedback when the TSA violates their civil rights (not their liberty, mind you: two vastly different concepts to Progressives). It helps that the Sikhs phrased this according to the Progressive paradigm, too, that the TSA discriminates. The fact that it’s rabidly unconstitutional doesn’t bother Progressives a whit; indeed, such evisceration is positively good, given St. Woodrow’s condemnation of the “straitjacket” constraining his power.
9:30 am on May 2, 2012
