This week, as part of their ministry, my seminary professor son flew to Thailand, my grandson flew to Malaysia. I have said to them and to anyone else who will listen, I am trusting in my blessed Lord that I will never have to board another plane for any reason.
This writer is a totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical officer veteran of the Korean War era. Since the war 60 years ago, I have traveled the world, 8 around the world trips (one trip 48 flights), passports stamped in 157 countries. I have been in small airports (Easter Island), the world's largest (Heathrow, Hong Kong).
I well remember my first commercial flight, Eastern Airlines propeller plane...the Raleigh/Durham Airport, about the size of a large mobile home. Air travel was a matter of dignity – class. I so well remember that passengers were well dressed, treated with politeness.
Now don't tell me that things have changed, terrorism. There have always been terrorists, even stage coach robberies. Which is worse, the robber or the robbed? If terrorism has forced us to give up every iota of decency, privacy in the name of security, then the terrorists have surely won.
This writer first experienced “shock and awe” of airline travel about 25 years ago on one of my many trips to Africa in Yaounde, Cameroons, Entebbe, Uganda. Body searches were performed on everyone. Evidently someone had tried to leave the country with jewels or something else “undeclared”. At the airport everyone was searched down to the skin, even the orifices of your body. Women went aboard the plan in absolute shock, uncontrolled crying. In order to get on the plane they had to submit to these indignities. Not one of us imagined that human beings could be treated in such a manner. Not even in darkest Africa, where Edi Amin was at his worst. The times I have flown EL-AL (Isreal's airline), the most protected airline in the world, none of these inhuman measures were used.
Of course, I do not plan to ever get on another plane, have sold my home on the east side of New York City, to which I did, at one time, fly every month (Piedmont, United). All I know is what the Obama newscasters allow on the air and in print. Gutless airline officials, spineless travel agencies, “politically correct” politicians, had rather see the public persecuted than the prosperity involved in travel. When you have given up privacy for security, groping – searching – scanning – radiating, soon you have nothing. The only recourse for the ticket buying public, staying home, not buying tickets OR since a contract is made when you pay your money for an airline ticket and you are subjected to such indignities, legal recourse against the airline. If you can find a lawyer to assist you who still believes in the constitution, civil rights, the future of America. You must find a lawyer willing to “walk the walk” as well as “talk the talk”. This old veteran knows about “Sunshine Patriots”, “fair weather friends”.
How long will it be before even a bumper sticker on your car, protesting the President or anything about your government, will give law enforcement the right to search your car? How long will it be before all airline passengers will be stripped of their clothing, much like a hospital gown, board a plane, after they have been thoroughly radiated? Those brave enough to endure such radiation may have detached retinas or other neurological contamination. Does anyone need to travel that desperately? There is not a funeral that the deceased would want you to endure such torture in order to attend. There is not one meeting, anywhere on earth, worth enduring such harassment, no graduation, no wedding, no grandchild's birth. We can be sure that we are being incrementally prepared for a government action in the sky enabling the government to scare and intimidate everyone into any type of submission. Don't we have enough sense to realize that in this age of 45 micro-biology, the terrorists can wipe out a large part of the population just by having the most evil germ population escaping from a container as one walks through air terminal buildings on the ground.
I was in a meeting, New York City, many years ago, when Gus Hall, American communist leader said, “Terrorism can wipe out any city over night. Just cigarette lighters – curtains and a willingness of distraught people to risk all when the wind is blowing in the right direction.”.
The only solution to an insulted populous embarrass veterans who have risked all for the protection of this country to bring the Christian remnant left to their knees in prayer for our nation's survival. Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us; Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)
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