The Lesser Evil

Sometimes we have to settle for the lesser of two evils. In the case of airline security, profiling is nasty because it stigmatizes all members of certain groups for the misbehavior of a small minority of those groups. So be it. Folks blowing up airliners is worse.

Hassling 80 year old white-haired grandmothers in the name of treating everyone equally is not sensible, and not a good use of our limited resources. See this article from Commentary in which Michael Totten makes this point very well. Having TSA personnel pay more attention to young men and women of groups likely to be Islamic, even though most such have no violent intent, makes sense.