Blog 4 Assignment

I reviewed a blog from a Mathew Yglesias who has a blog site named http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/. I read a blog he posted 10/13/09 at 2:31pm titled “Does Security do any good?” I skimmed through several of the author’s other blogs on this site and I could not get a fix on who is intended audience is. According to this course syllabus, his blog is listed as a liberal weblog, however, one of his articles clearly gives favorable marks to the Republican party on how it runs internal discipline amongst its congressional members (see blog: Republicans run their party the right way). Is the author credible? After clicking on the authors’ bio, the answer is clear: No. He has a degree in Philosophy and wrote one book, which means more than likely he’s a barista working at Starbucks who has nothing but spare time on his hands to work on his blog. My opinion is that he doesn’t like the hassle of going through security checkpoints. Too bad he failed to back up his argument up with any reasonable points.

According to Yglesias, American security agencies like TSA are worthless. He compares a recent trip to Europe and observed that not only is airport security more relaxed in Danish countries, they don’t make you take off your shoes when passing through the x-ray machine. His logic for the lack of any recent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil: Since many people in this country have access to some type of weapon capable of inflicting mass casualties to “soft’ targets at places where large numbers of people gather, there’s nothing really stopping someone from doing it regardless of any security that is present. So why have it in the first place since its costing the country billions of dollars yearly? Great point. While we’re at it, Why not disband all of the country’s police and fire departments because as we all know, any person could commit a crime or light a fire at any time and probably wouldn’t get caught. Oh I forgot, doing something like that would tear society’s fabric apart and have it spinning towards anarchy. Silly me.

Seriously, airport security programs are complex and complicated organizations that serve a vital purpose. They contain intricate intelligence gathering units and more than likely are not run by philosophy majors. Had the current airport security and intelligence systems been in place on 9/10/01, the twin towers would still be standing. While most people could cause a major terrorist event anywhere in the U.S. at any time and they don’t, it’s because the majority of society is not sociopathic, mentally ill, or into religious zealotry. Those are the folks the TSA people are looking for, not me or you. So Matthew, on your next blog, please attempt to use critical thinking instead of Platonic realism. Oh and next time, not so much mocha in my Venti triple-skinny-mocha-latte. It affects my writing by making my biting criticism seem sarcastic.