The Transportation Security Administration is making headlines yet again. Last month, authorities in Kansas detained 4-year-old Isabella Brademeyer as her family tried to board their plane.

According to the agency, the toddler was accused of having a gun and was labeled a “high security threat.”

Four days ago, an 18-month-old child was escorted from a flight by TSA agents who claimed the child appeared on a ‘no-fly’ list. Whether her parents’ Middle Eastern heritage had anything to do with the incident remains unknown.

On Tuesday, an 88-year-old man in a wheelchair received an excessive and invasive pat-down while trying to enter his gate.

His name, you ask? Henry Kissinger, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, former Secretary of State and key figure in America’s diplomatic relations in the 1970s.

The sad fact is that these stories have become commonplace. They are no longer anomalies, nor are they even controversial anymore.

Instead, the average American stands idly-by, sacrificing their freedoms, praying they aren’t stopped for a ‘routine search,’ wincing as a random person gropes their bodies, hoping the scanners they are walking through don’t really give them cancer.

Freedoms bargained for the excellent prize of? Drumroll…. A three-hour round-trip flight to the wonderful Omaha, Nebraska! *Peanuts and Diet Coke sold separately*

Ten years ago, this painstaking attention to detail might have been warranted. Americans were scared, to say the least, and we figured that national security was worth trading a few of our most basic civil liberties.

Today, the fear has (for the most part) settled, the fear-mongering died down, the constant threat of attack subsided.

Yet we still maintain that this scrutiny is necessary. It’s OK that Senator Rand Paul was detained for refusing a search, because “you never know, right?”

The sight of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield being groped by a TSA agent is necessary- “wouldn’t want to discriminate, ya know?”

This “what if?” rhetoric seems to perpetually drive us away from any return to normalcy. Every day, violations of our Constitutionally-granted rights are ignored. We sacrifice our most fundamental liberties in defense of “national security.”

Bills like the Cyber Intelligence Sharing andProtection Act, the National Defense Authorization Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act are steadily diminishing the true “land of the free,” and a growing number of Americans seem complacent.

The only widespread opposition to these bills came with the latter, SOPA, and only because a handful websites shut down in protest.

“Take our liberties, just not our Wikipedia!”

Holding on to our freedoms will not be an easy task. Much like other movements, the call for change will not be an overnight venture. But we can start by developing a social conscience.

We can initiate a legitimate conversation through awareness. Follow the news, write your representatives, have a voice in government- take a stance against these violations of freedom before you have no voice at all.

John Downen is a junior journalism major.

He can be reached at 581-7942

or [email protected]