Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, slated to speak at the John Locke Foundation’s 20th anniversary dinner Jan. 13 in Cary, addresses the Christmas Day airline terrorism scare in this new Human Events column:
America is long overdue for a serious global strategy that includes targeting threats such as the terrorist killer at Fort Hood, the individuals recently arrested in Detroit, Denver and New York, and the five Americans detained in Pakistan.
The scale, persistence and sophistication of the enemy requires an honesty, a clarity, and a scale appropriate to the response.
Once again, instead of targeting the source of the threats, our politically correct government decides to make life more miserable for the travelling public by imposing hopelessly meaningless rules such as not allowing passengers to leave their seats in the last hour of the flight. Bound by cultural sensitivities, the default reaction of the bureaucracy is to review the procedures and wring its hands ineffectively.
Today, because our elites fear politically incorrect honesty, they believe that it is better to harass the innocent, delay the harmless, and risk the lives of every American than to do the obvious, the effective, and the necessary.
Before a lot more Americans are killed we must acquire the courage to tell the truth and to act on that truth.
