Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.

In a way though, it has gone too far. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently added a new stipulation that lighters cannot be carried aboard airplanes. You can still carry matches though, which to me, doesn’t make sense. They are virtually the same thing, a way of creating fire in an airplane. Why ban one, and not the other? It’s ridiculous really if you think about it.

Why the ban in the first place though? Traveling yesterday through one of our airports (which I will not mention for fear of Big Brother), I asked a TSA agent this very question. The response? “Because of that shoe bomber a few years ago.” Huh? So I had to ask why ban the just the lighters and not the matches as well. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t make the rules we just have to follow them. The people that make the rules don’t work the screening areas.” Seriously. This was the response I got. I shrugged my shoulders, uttered an unimpressive “okay,” and the agent just kind of shrugged back with a look on their face as if to say ”I know, it’s ridiculous.” The funny part about all of this is that this shoe bomber did not even attempt to use a lighter, but matches! And it was a few years ago? Then why the ban now? Why not a few years ago when it was realized that a fire could be started on an airplane? Here’s the TSA’s rule on it.

A pilot friend of mine had a better theory. It is Big Brother. The government wants the public to quit smoking. If the government can make it as inconvenient as possible for people to smoke, they figure people will just quit. The ban on lighters is just another roadblock to making smoking more of a pain in any place outside of your own home. Not only can you not carry a lighter with you through a security checkpoint, but they are banned in your checked luggage as well. Yes, a bag that you have no possible way of accessing in flight.

As a non-smoker, I do empathize with the smokers of this country. It seems everywhere you go now smoking is not allowed, or if it is, in very select areas only. The non-smokers love it I’m sure. No longer do they smell like smoke when they leave a bar or restaurant. No longer do they have to "deal with" secondhand smoke. Whatever.

I’d like to think that “The American Way” is still alive and well. I’d like to think that “The Land of the Free” is exactly that, free. It just seems that every day, we lose a little bit more of our freedoms, and pretty soon we will have none left.