(no subject)

[holzman_tweed]

Over the last few years, a number of people have taken the position that we should be focussing our anti-terrorism efforts on people who look like the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center. Notions of random searching, opposition to racially based "suspect profiling" and such have been denounced as "political correctness" getting in the way of protecting us from terrorists.

Nope. (Thanks to maxomai for the link.)

Had we been relying on racially based profiles, focussing on foreigners, figured "We don't have to bother checking out that elderly gentleman, he couldn't possibly be a terrorist" and so on, the United Nations would have been subject to chemical and conventional attack. That's a huge success for our security, and my hats off to the people who are finding -- as we found all through the Clinton administration -- that we need not suspend the Constitution to go after terrorists.

There is a meme that grows from Godwin's law that if two people are arguing and one calls another a Nazi, the utterance should be construed as a concession of the argument. I propose that the words "politically correct" be construed in the same way.

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Hm. Wouldn't go quite so far as that. But TSA has found all manner of screwy stuff in teddy bears and suchlike, which underlines the idea that profiling can miss the people you want.

This guy, though -- it looks like they found him in a traffic stop...