Maybe in another 114 years I’ll link to Time Magazine again: here’s a story from their current issue on the oldest living American, my grandmother-in-law. [Obligatory reference to political theory: her full name is Emma Verona Calhoun Johnston. That’s “Calhoun” as in John C. Calhoun, although she’s not a direct descendent.]
Good Stock
She was born in the same year as Dwight Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle. Hard to believe.
WW
Traveling like that today she’d get frisked along with the Arabs
“She no longer travels solo to visit kin in Omaha, Neb., and San Diego, as she did at 100 […].” (— from the Time article)
Were she to do it today at age 100 instead of fourteen years ago she’d get picked out as a prime target for frisking by the Bush-Ridge airport Homeland Security apparatus, as she watched all the twenty-something Arab men with scowls on their faces worse than Mohammad Atta’s walk right through the terminal gates untouched. (Hey, cut them some slack! Airport security has one mission and one mission only—to show how racially unprejudiced it is. Don’t tell me anyone actually thought it was there to do airport security!! Puh-leeze!! I mean—can you guys get with the program??)
I received an e-mail doubting the veracity of my comment of 8/25
I replied by sending the person the following, which is excerpted from comments made by Prof. Steinlight at a panel discussion on (what I refer to as) excessive incompatible immigration (scroll about two-thirds of the way down the very long panel-discussion text):
“I would also say, and this is critical, that if a person—that Muslim immigrants to this country or potential visa seekers have to be asked searching questions about their political and religious affiliations. Not to do so is simply to ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the room. And if that offends against some of the aspects of political culture that prevail today, so be it. […] Some of these things […] need to be more targeted to Muslims—that is where the threat is. […] I will never forget [Transportation Secretary] Norman Minetta saying to [a] question by Tim Russert—Russert said, let’s imagine a scenario in the airport. You have two people. You have a woman—we’re in the Twin Cities airport, you have a Norwegian grandmother with six suitcases surrounded by great-grandchildren, grandchildren kissing her goodbye. She’s paid for her trip in advance to get a cheap flight. She stayed in the country. She has family here for several generations. She’s going back. And you have a Jordanian—someone traveling on a Jordanian passport, a young man of 22. He has no luggage. He has just paid for his ticket in cash. He’s made a few statements that sound reasonably questionable. Who do you check? He said we check both equally. Now, that is political correctness gone insane […].”
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“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.