Homeland Security

Recently, it has been revealed (click here) that the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Safety Administration was planning to cut air marshals from long distance flights in order to save money on hotel accomodations for the marshals. It is strange that many conservatives have pushed for measures of questionable morality and dubious effectiveness, such as racial profiling and the torture of terror suspects, while Bush administration has not been taking care of measures (like the air marshalls or port security, which has been thoroughly ignored) which are more likely to actually stop a terrorist attack and do not raise serious ethical issues. There are a few possible reasons for this situation. In some cases, bigotry may play a hand (especially in the case of the folks with "no arabs=no terrorists" stickers), but I think this is a small minority and not the case with most conservatives. The second, more likely one is that conservative push for "tough", but contraversial measures while ignoring the fact that the administration has mis-handled more practical propsals, is political. By pushing for hard line policies, conservatives know they will get a reaction out of many liberals and then declare triumphantly that their opponents are weak on defense, DO NOT CARE ABOUT WINNING THE WAR ON TERROR and other such nonsense. The Right's support of policies that limit civil liberties often does not come from a genuine concern about national security so much a desire to use national security as a crude political bludgeon.