• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 693 0

Napolitano proclaimed, “The system worked.” There was “no suggestion that [the suspect] was improperly screened.” Allowing a man—with the intent to take down a plane and the materials to do it—to pass security and board an aircraft from Amsterdam to Detroit is the opposite of the system working. The underwear bomber was foiled in his efforts only because of the actions of his fellow passengers, no thanks to any government screening system. Thus, not only does Homeland Security fail to protect us; the politicians who run it cannot even acknowledge their failure.

As the examples of Barcia at the George Washington Bridge and the TSA show, the government is still imposing physical restrictions on our ability to travel freely. Although they may not be as conspicuous as internment camps or outright slavery, when a mother in labor is deprived of the freedom to travel to a hospital where she can safely give birth, all for some subjective showing of necessity to prevent drunk drivers, liberty is in exile.

Financial Restrictions on Travel

Although physical restrictions on the freedom to travel might be the most infuriating, the impediments to move freely that we experience on a daily basis typically take place in a more surreptitious form: Financial restrictions. Like freedom of speech, if the right is to attain its true meaning, it must be free from the “chilling” effects of government burdens. Stated simply, financial restrictions deter us from utilizing the right, and therefore cannot be reconciled with the Natural Law, which enunciates not only certain rights, but the free exercise thereof.

77

Financial restrictions typically come in the form of government monopolization of the means of travel, and the subsequent inefficiencies which inevitably occur when a business entity is shielded from competition. Take, for example, New York City’s public transportation system. Interestingly, it was initially a private enterprise that was first to provide subterranean travel to the public. On October 27th 1904, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) opened the first official subway system. It consisted of a 9.1-mile-long subway line that connected twenty-eight stations from City Hall to 145th Street and Broadway. Unfortunately for all of us, in 1932, New York’s Board of Transportation purchased the IRT in the wave of New Deal politics and became the owner and operator of all New York City subway lines.10 Fast-forwarding ahead, owing to an absence of competition and crumbling infrastructure, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the successor to the Board of Transportation, approved a 10 percent increase in subway and bus fares from $2.00 to $2.25 in May 2009.11 Although this may appear to be a paltry sum, the percentage increase in our transportation costs is certainly more than many of us can expect in our paychecks. Are the subway cars and bus seats any cleaner or better maintained? No; in fact, “the trains will be cleaned less often,” says an MTA board member. Will the subway be any safer? No; in fact, the cuts in security personnel made the subway even less safe to travel on. In other words, the twenty-five cents out of each subway fare are the product of sheer government waste.

One may wonder, if subterranean travel was not available to us in the first place, then should not the government be free, if not obligated, to provide us this new service in order to further the public welfare? The difficulty with this line of thought is that individuals, in the form of private businesses, should be free to finance and construct their own means of travel. Could the government declare tomorrow that henceforth, individuals will be prohibited from utilizing boats, unless operated by the government? Shouldn’t individuals be free to construct their own boat so as to facilitate travel to wherever they desire? The government’s grant of monopoly privileges over a means of travel to itself is always in contravention of the right to travel.

Consider in this regard the government-subsidized railroad system. This behemoth transportation