This entry in the Washington Times about flight attendants still being trained to submit to hijackers has made me more angry than anything I’ve seen in a long time.

Exactly how big of an idiot do you have to be to realize that the risk/reward ratio for resisting hijackers has changed forever to the side of reward? The reward is: possibly living. The risk is: possibly dying. The risk of doing nothing is almost certainly dying, and the benefit is, you may get to live until your plane is used as a murder weapon for people on the ground.

This, if for no other reason, is why I’m a libertarian. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a government to tell that child to allow people to murder him and others.

This is morally, rationally, ethically, and even aesthetically indefensible. The only moral framework from which this can be argued is pacifism (which I view as immoral, as it basically aids and abets murder by not opposing it in any meaningful way), and I highly doubt the same government who will try to throw you in jail for “embarrassing” them or invades the nation of Iraq because they didn’t like the cut of their leader’s jib is operating on the principle of pacifism.

Remember, if you’re for nationalized health care, you want the same decision-making quality that went into the TSA in charge of your cancer treatment: “It’s best not to treat cancer because there are nasty side-effects.”