David McElroy

In Montgomery County, Texas, the sheriff’s department has just bought a remote-controlled drone with money from the federal government. The sheriff is vague about exactly why it’s needed, but if you look at his men posing with it, above, you get the idea that these are people going to war, not protecting and serving everyday people.

The militarization of civilian police forces is a worrisome thing to me. With the change in tactics has come a change in attitude. Although police work could always attract an arrogant element who were interested in “showing who’s boss,” it seems that the culture is getting more arrogant and more aggressive.

Radley Balko wrote what I consider to be the definitive paper about police militarization five years ago when he was at the Cato Institute. “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America” is still very much worth reading five years later. It’s even more chilling when you realize that the trend has gotten even more serious since then.

Look at the guns and gear of the soldiers — I mean, deputies — in the pictures above. Is this what we want our police to be? Is the police culture today so excited about this sort of “playing soldier” mentality that it doesn’t care as much about the more mundane things that matter most to everyday people?

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Security Theatre has lost its porno channel in Europe, but the ones operated by TSA agents in U.S. airports are still showing.

The European Union announced this week that the X-ray scanners the TSA loves so much are being banned because of safety concerns. There are two types of advanced scanners being used in U.S. airports — X-ray machines and millimeter-wave scanners. Only the X-ray machines are considered a health risk. About half of the advanced scanners in use in the United States are the X-ray type.

The TSA claims that in almost two years of use, all of the advanced scanners — of both types combined — have detected “more than 300 dangerous or illegal items.” Of course, if those 300 items were actually dangerous things — as opposed to a a water bottle that was too big or something nutty such as that — they’d tell us what the “dangerous” items are.

Scientific estimates of cancers caused by the X-ray scanners each year range from about six to about 100. Given the fact that Security Theatre is mostly just to make the public feel safe — instead of providing actual safety — it’s time to shut Security Theatre down. But once bureaucrats are committed to a program, they don’t generally back down. Don’t expect the TSA to suddenly start caring about cancer or cost effectiveness. Expect the bureaucrats and politicians in charge to stick to their guns — or, rather, scanners.

We live in a culture that worships ideas, but I’m frequently left stewing in my ideas and getting nothing done. If knowledge is power — and if ideas are supremely important — why do we have so many educated people with brilliant ideas who achieve little or nothing? For me, that’s been a painful question at times.

I grew up with a supreme confidence in ideas — and a supreme confidence in my own ideas. Actual execution was an afterthought for me. When you’re young and nobody expects that much out of you, just a halfway decent execution of your ideas is almost always enough to impress people — and doing that made me happy.

As I got older, though, a funny thing happened. In the adult world, execution matters more than ideas. In so many of the things I did as a child and as a teen-ager, the good idea was enough to carry the day. Teachers and other adults were impressed. “He’s going to do great things one day,” they’d say.

Looking back, I see that the times when I accomplished anything with my ideas, it was always when I had a partner who was working closely with me. The pattern was always the same. The ideas and inspiration were mine. The practical incentive to turn the ideas into reality — to actually finish what I started — was in the more practical partner working with me. At the time, I didn’t know why I needed that. I understand now.

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