True, but we do place restrictions on things to minimize risk to, or do you generally drive on the left side of the street?
There is a pretty wide lane between prudent measures to mitigate an obvious risk and measures taken to mitigate one with a low probability of fruition.
The order is not relevant - unless you happened to be present when the document was written and asked the author if there was any intent with the order of the list. There is no ranking of importance - liberty and security do not outrank each other in the document, although I place liberty above security because without liberty, our country is no longer what it was created to be.
I would accept this as a truism. I would also say, just because you'll never reach it doesn't mean you should just throw up your hands and give up.
I've never advocated giving up - but I have to say that a good number of our current aviation security efforts appear to be in that league - nothing but theater to keep the masses impressed, resulting in almost no quantifiable benefit - except by dumb luck.
Define "wisely" in terms other than "what you personally agree with."
I think wisely is self explanatory - for example, not investing millions in puffer machines to satisfy a politically motivated contract, and then abandoning what could be promising technology. Another example, not wasting untold billions to create the TSA (against the viewpoint of this Administration, no less) in order to unjustly enrich the pockets of a certain crooked Democratic Senator's wife and her cronies.
So long as you agree with what's happening you'll consider it "wise" and "intelligent" and "learned" and "experienced", etc. If you don't, then we're back to idiot land.
So we're not allowed to challenge these decisions? I call it as I see it. When I see something resembling a 'best effort' combined with realistic expectations and good spending habits, my criticism is likely to subside - although I reserve the right to call out things that just don't look right to me.