Nate Heatwole: Greensboro’s Quaker Rule-Breaker

There’s a part of me that doesn’t feel sorry at all for Guilford College student Nathaniel Heatwole, who was charged in federal court today for smuggling box cutters and other items aboard Southwest Airlines jetliners. After all, it was a stupid thing to do and he should’ve known that he’d get the book thrown at him if he was caught.

But that’s just it. He didn’t get caught. He turned himself in. He walked past the crack Transportation Security Administration staff onto two jets in mid September, left box cutters, bleach, strike-anywhere matches and modeling clay resembling plastic explosives in both planes, and nobody found them until he e-mailed the TSA last week and told them where they were. Mid September? It’s the 20th of October!

That stuff was on those planes for over a month and no one was the wiser. He had done the same thing back in April. Thanks, TSA! Everyone’s waiting in long lines and dealing with more airport BS than usual, all in the name of security, and this is our reward for our collective inconvenience? I think the saddest part of this is that the only people that seem to be genuinely surprised by this is the TSA itself.

This is just yet another reminder to me that I don’t feel any safer from the bad guys than I did on 9/11, and I don’t like it. I know that I read that there are more things being done. And I’m sure that there are tons of well-meaning government employees that make themselves sick at night worrying about how to best keep us all safe. I really appreciate those people.

The problem is, I still don’t really feel any safer. I don’t know that any of us do. And I’m not sure that we ever will. I’m not sure what magic event or day will finally pass when I will feel that I can let my guard down. But until that day comes, I’m glad that there are people like Nate Heatwole – stupid as it was – to take one for the team and show our government that they can be doing a lot more for us than they’re doing right now.

Thanks, Nate. I’ll be sure to send you some smokes in the Big House.