Keeping our doors open

My wife and I recently returned from a trip to France.

We landed at Boston's Logan airport and after scurrying off the plane we headed to the passport control queues where we stood in line for nearly an hour waiting to enter our country.

It's bad enough that there is no clarity on airport security in the world today -- what is deemed unsafe at one airport is passed at another and so one; there is little coordination or seeming cooperation among and between the airlines and the various governments involved.

But frankly I think we make too much of this passport control business -- much of Europe has moved beyond such nonsense, the UK excepting, and in most of Western Europe borders are wide open of course.

In fact I would like to see us tear down the borders between Canada and Mexico. Building walls only seem to make things worse and I often wonder if maybe we shouldn't try a different tack for a change. But there's no telling that to so many Americans (from the US) who are convinced that the billions we have spent since 9/11 on so-called airport security is money well-spent, that the sacrifice of a little liberty for a little security is justified -- even though not one terrorist has been stopped at the airport. As we saw recently by recent events in England terrorists are caught only by good intelligence and outstanding police work. Not by strip searching 80-year-old grandmas or having aunt Effie take her shoes off.

What bothered us as we were standing in the US resident line was how humiliating it must be for non-residents coming to the US to have to stand and be photographed and finger-printed like common criminals. And God help the woman wearing a headscarf or some other indication of a certain religious preference. That evening we watched as two young women and their male companions were grilled for more than 20 minutes at one station.

Now some might say that such things are the price of freedom. Sorry folks but giving up freedom as the price of freedom is illogical and patently absurd. I just wonder how long before the rest of us will have to suffer such indignities just to return to our own country.

I say wait until it starts happening to you and they take your 18-year-old daughter aside to strip search her after she comes back from a semester abroad and maybe you'll sing a different tune.

But of course by then it will be too late.

Now that's tragic.