In understanding current controversies, I often find it instructive to start putting assorted shoes on various other feet and see how things look from there. For instance, the latest round of discussions on airport security and profiling.

Jonah Goldberg raises a common objection in his column today: “Why is it morally superior to inconvenience old Mormon women of Swedish descent—for no reason at all—as much as young men from Pakistan?” A good question, that becomes an even better one if you switch around a few shoes.

Imagine, for instance, that it was the Ku Klux Klan that was bombing airplanes…and that on his next flight out of D.C., Jesse Jackson’s party got singled out, more or less randomly, for extra screening. What do you think he would say? Do you think he would find this morally superior to focusing the TSA’s attention on white males hailing from Southern and border states?

No, I would expect something more along the lines of “What, are you insane? We’re not the terrorists…we’re the people you’re supposed to be protecting from the terrorists! How brain-damaged do you have to be to not see that?” And I would be in full agreement. Now that I think of it, it’d be nice if, say, some disabled American veteran of Irish lineage or suchlike would throw a similar fit today. (He’d have to not care whether he would ever be allowed to fly again, of course.)

And just imagine how some Southern advocacy group would be received if they stepped forward to play the role that CAIR does now. How do you think the government would respond to their calls, in the immediate wake of a 21st-century version of the Birmingham church bombing, to reach out to disaffected white Southerners, to protect them from any hate or discrimination or other unpleasant backlash, to solemnly instruct Americans that the redneck culture is really one of peace and understanding? And don’t forget their demands that the “understandable rage” over this, that or the other thing be understood by everyone…not that any of it justifies terrorism, exactly; but we must always go after the “root causes”, you know…

Somehow I think it would all play out very differently, especially among the politically correct crowd, who would be making very different noises than they do now.