Mardin Amin faces three years in jail for “felony disorderly conduct” resulting from his attempt to carry a penis pump onto an airplane. He was traveling with his mother when a Department of Homeland Security officer noticed a strange object in his bag and asked him what it was. Not wanting his mom to know what he was packing, he leaned over and whispered “It’s a pump.” The DHS agent heard “It’s a bomb” and these days that’s enough to lock someone away.

I wonder how many years in jail I would get for reenacting my favorite scence from Spinal Tap.

When I read that someone had been prevented from boarding a plane because he was wearing a t-shirt with Arabic writing, I assumed it was a minor incident at small local airport involving a confused baggage screener.

I was wrong.

Raed Jarrar was waiting to board a plane at New York’s Kennedy Airport with a shirt that read “We will not be silent” in both English and Arabic. He was approached by both airline staff and government officials as he was having breakfast after he had cleared security. Jarrar was told that some passengers had complained about his shirt and that he would not be permitted on the flight while he was wearing it.

“We will not be silent” is apparently the slogan of an organization who opposes some of the Bush administration’s policies targeting Americans of Middle Eastern descent. I don’t know anything about this guy or his organization, but that’s not the point. This is pretty basic freedom of speech here.

Now, in a society that understands freedom of speech, those confused by the writing might have asked him what it means. Sure, there will always be nut-jobs who are freaked out by anything different, but when these people complain to the cops they should be told “It’s a free country” or perhaps the cop could ask the t-shirt wearer about the meaning and then reassure the nervous passenger who was frightened by the shirt.

Unfortunately, none of this happened. He was trying to make a statement that people did not want to hear, so was not permitted to travel.

I’ve always felt that freedom of speech, religion and association are profoundly unnatural concepts. They go against so much of human psychology. That is why such freedoms need to be not only indoctrinated into us at an early age, but encoded into clear, strictly enforced laws to prevent get-reactions like this.

An MSNBC poll showing 60% of readers consider the airline’s actions approprate is not a good sign for American freedom.

The ultimate irony is that these kinds of arbitrary restrictions and ad-hoc rules are always justified as necessary steps to “protect our freedom.”

You can read the whole exchange here if you like. Kind of interesting how the detective assumed Jarrar hated New York.