Quote of the day - Mark Steyn - FAA utopia

The commercial airliner is an Al Gore dream. There is no smoking. There is 100% gun control. You are by obliged by law to do everything the cabin crew tell you to do. If the stewardess is rude to you, tough. If you’re rude to her, there’ll be officers waiting to arrest you when you land. The justification for all this is a familiar one - that in return for surrendering individual liberties, we’ll all be collectively better off. That was the deal: do as you’re told, and the Federal Aviation Administration will look after you.

Last Tuesday morning, the FAA failed spectacularly to honour their end of the bargain – as I’m sure the terrorists knew they would. By all accounts, they travelled widely during the long preparations for their mission, and they must have seen that an airline cabin is the one place where, thanks to the FAA, you can virtually guarantee you’ll meet no resistance. Indeed, in their FAA-mandated coerciveness the average coach-class cabin is the nearest the western world gets to the condition of those terrorists’ home states.

Mark Steyn - September 22, 2001