The British playwright and critic G.B. Shaw is supposed to have had a conversation similar to the following with a woman at a dinner party during a conversation on prostitution:

"Madam, hypothetically, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?"'

She, "Perhaps, yes."

He, "How about for a shilling?"

She, "Certainly not! What do you think I am?"

He, "That we have established. Now we are merely haggling over the price."

I agree that to compare the degree to which we are forced to give up our civil liberties and our dignity to screening procedures is slight when compared to the horrors of fascism - by whatever name. I agree that to equate the practices and the climate is probably not helpful to debate simply because it allows those who advance the argument to be dismissed too easily.

However, another part of me recognizes that perhaps it is only degree and not direction that we are arguing about.

Aside from the waste of resources, one of the worst characteristics of current "security" procedures is that it induces people to lower their expectations of being able to maintain dignity, privacy, and the integrity of their person.

Personally, I have made it a practice to be civil and respectful of the individuals who - while usually civil - carry out procedures and make demands that are anything but respectful to me. I choose simply not to overtly treat the frontline people who operate the foolish and evil system as evil fools themselves. However, I continue to resent what this kind of acquiescence does to the presumption of what is my relationship to the government which designs and carries it out.

The principle of differentiating the sin from the sinner, I suppose, also applies.

Steaming inside!