A world of sheep

Although a few unruly passengers have made the headlines in recent days, the increasingly repressive governments of the world should be thrilled that passengers are accepting yet another bolstering of airport security and in-flight harassment. But what choice do passengers have, when lowly security officers and flight attendants are given such arbitrary control over human lives? The Czech student group Inventura demokracie, or Democracy Czech-Up in English, uses the term "ovčané" to condemn the way we are being turned into citizen-sheep. This is the first generation of Czech students who grew up entirely under democracy, yet they still feel the impact of the Communist system. What is fascinating is that it took tanks and barbed wire for the Communists to turn people into flocks of sheep; twenty years later, the democracies of the world are doing it with something as benign as full-body scanners.