The Mob Rules

By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the passengers on a flight from Spain to the UK who refused to let the plane take off until a pair of Muslim males were given the boot.

This is Bush and Blair’s fault. At least if you spend a bit of time reading the leftist blogs.

Hate-monger, Dave Neiwert, is on vacation, but he has found an equally hyperbolic and hypocritical replacement in Mrs. Sara Robinson. In her words, this would have never happened if Bush and Blair would quit spreading fear of terrorist attacks by muslim men on aircraft.

There’s only one word for this. It’s vigilantism, pure and simple. It’s no different than any other kind of lynch mob. And it is beneath the dignity of a civilized society.

While I wouldn’t call the group of passengers a ‘lynch mob’, I would say that the mob mentality took over. These people are, by their own testimony, afraid for their lives, and because humans are animals, their survival reflexes kick in. A single person, on the average, is smart enough to calm themselves down in this scenario, but groups, by and large, are ignorant, raving and insane.

She then goes on to tell us what this kind of mentality will positively lead to if not checked at the political correctness door

But there’s far more at stake here than meets the eye. If these vigilante mobs are allowed to get their way on airplanes, what’s to stop them from taking their show on the road? Are we going to see subway mobs assaulting brown people on train platforms to “prevent” subway bombings? Are restarauters going to find themselves under pressure from upset diners not to hire — or seat — certain “frightening” classes of people? Will neighborhood groups press realtors to stop selling local homes to specific ethnic groups, for fear property values will drop? Or will they, perhaps, subject “undesirable” neighbors to harassment campaigns until they’re forced to move on?

Mrs. Robinson’s solution for this isn’t education or stronger security measures, she wants the airlines to lie to us.

Greater sanity is called for. The airlines need to start by stating, unequivocally, that they trust the decisions of their security staff on the ground. And even if they can’t make that statement with a clear conscience, allowing vigilante mobs to intimidate their passengers and crews isn’t the way to solve it.

We hear everyday about how the left dislikes being lied to; By right-wing politicians, by left wing politicians, by the people in the media, etc. But in a situation where their physical safety might be in question, they want to be lied to.

Reality based, they are not. They would rather be herded sheep made to feel safe by happy lies.

This much I know: There are some principles worth more than any plane ticket.

I have principles too, but they generally involve me being alive to act on them and they never involve me asking to be lied to.

Sock-puppeteer extraordinaire, Glenn Greenwald plays the same violin

All of the fear-mongering and political exploitation of terrorism from the Bush administration and its loyal supporters (including the British Prime Minister) is starting to produce predictable results.

(snip)

What is certain is that as government officials like Tony Blair and those in the Bush administration come to rely more and more on fear-mongering, there is a lot more incidents like this in our future, and many of them will be worse.

He then goes on to link to a comparison of this incident versus the shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes by police in the London subway. Though Greenwald forgets to mention that de Menezes ran from police, and towards a crowded subway car, after repeated warnings to stop (he most likely ran because his visa was expired and he was in the country illegally).

Captain Ed, backhandedly linked to by Greenwald, has it just about right

Is that fair? Hardly. However, the unwillingness of the governments in both the UK and the US to provide systems of screening that instill confidence in the flying public has led to these incidents. They will continue and increase while screening systems insist on playing political correctness games instead of focusing on real threats as the Israelis have done for decades.

Greenwald blatantly lies and implies that the Israelis racially profile, a fact that anyone who has ever taken even the slightest look into the El Al screening program would tell you is a gross mislabelling.

But hey, if the leftists are willing to let the airlines lie to them, then surely they’re willing to be lied to by their favorite bloggers too.