rigger wrote:

I'd even propose the rediculous inspections of passengers at airports
is the dehumanizing process it is because people are afraid to use
their common sense and are afraid they won't be PC. The police are
often dragged out in public and flayed over profiling when anyone with
a mere smidgen of intelligence realizes this is an essential tool of
their trade.

Stick with what you've been taught and learned through the years to be
true and ignore the ranting of the uneducated. If these people can't
learn from your experience let them learn the hard way.

dennis
in nca

Dennis:

It's not that people are afraid to use their common sense, it's that we
have made it illegal to do so. PC has become not a moral guide, but
the law. If an inspector at the airport were to single out for more
thorough scrutiny everyone his common sense told him might be a threat,
he'd make not only the newspapers but also the court docket. Common
sense has been thrown out like the baby with the bath water.

I wonder if the Israelis worry as much about the evils of profiling at
their airports as we do at ours?

Remember Jesse Jackson's statement that, when he heard footsteps behind
him on a dark street and turned to see who was behind him, he was
relieved if he saw that his follower was white? How many people
branded him as a racist for that remark? Very few. Instead, the
reaction was that it was sad but true, and just common sense. Now,
let's just imagine that it was instead Pat Robertson that said it. Or
someone the press really likes, such as Dick Cheney. Or, maybe, Bill
Bennett. Think he stands a chance now if he should run for political
office?

I choose common sense over political correctness, as I suspect a lot of
the other people on this newsgroup do. At the cost of occasionally
being called an unfeeling dinosaur, or something worse.

On the other hand, common sense being applied by someone who lacks it
can be dangerous indeed.

John Martin