America is no longer the ‘home of the brave’
Jun 12, 2013, 12:00 PM | Updated: 12:00 pm
America doesn’t deserve the distinction “home of the brave” anymore.
We aren’t. Everything seems to cause a panic.
Look at the response to the “telephonic bomb threat” made against Southwest Airlines flight 2675. The plane made an emergency landing in Phoenix as a precaution.
Sky Harbor Airport was basically shut down as the Phoenix bomb squad and FBI bomb technicians scoured the plane while they searched for explosives. Traffic was backed up for miles as the terminals were only accessible via the east entrance. The 143 passengers were put on a few Sky Harbor buses, asked to fill out a form from the FBI and then interviewed by the bureau one by one.
Despite all of this, there was no bomb. According to several tweets, the passengers aboard the flight arrived in Austin around 2 a.m. local time, almost eight hours late.
Apparently, all it takes to ground an airplane is a phone call. One terminal at the Richmond International airport was evacuated Tuesday morning because of a phoned in bomb threat.
Schools in Newtown, Conn. — where Sandy Hook Elementary is located — were placed on a lockdown Monday afternoon because some sick individual called in some type of threat. Even here locally, a Gilbert Target was evacuated for the same reason.
There were no actual threats at any of these locations. I understand the need to take threats seriously but at what point does the reaction to them become a joke?
In Hayward, Calif., an elementary school principal has started a toy gun buy-back program. Kids who bring their NERF guns in will receive a raffle ticket. The grand prize is a bike. Hopefully that bike comes with a helmet because they are more dangerous than toy guns (I still have the scars to prove that).
The school’s principal, Charles Hill, said, “Playing with toys guns, saying ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ desensitizes them, so as they get older, it’s easier for them to use a real gun.”
Really? This is what America has become: A country that suddenly thinks toy guns desensitize children. A country that scrambles F-16s to escort a Southwest Airlines flight because someone picked up a telephone. A country that suspends children for eating their Pop Tart into the shape of a gun.
If this keeps up we may have to change our national anthem to “home of the wussies.”
