Is all the travel necessary?

With the new tighter security standards at airports resulting in accusations of TSA screeners groping passengers, I find myself wondering how long it will take for enough folks to boycott the airlines and force Congress to rethink their entire approach to airline security? 

Some folks say we should adopt the Israeli approach to pre-flight vetting of passengers, which I support if Americans don't mind footing the bill for much more government insight into our daily lives.  Some folks maintain our government already has all the information on us that the Israelis have on their folks.  Uncle Sam may have the data, but it's gonna take a whole lot more folks to turn that data into usable information, I believe.  So where's the money coming from?  The airlines?  The passengers?  The government?

I think there's a more fundamental question that ought to be asked: is all the travel really necessary?  How much safer would we as a nation be if we spent less time travelling?

If we didn't feel obliged to mosey all the time we might find

• costs of fuel would fall with domestic demand leaving consumers with more cash to invest in other ways (cutting consumption AND taxes both leave more $ in your hands, ya know?)
• less domestic demand might help wean us on dependence on alliances with less that savory nations abroad (which means we have less reason to police other nation's borders so we can get their oil)
• we'd get to know our neighbors and regions and appreciate the towns and states we call home
• we'd find that life can be mighty rich and diverse right where we are if we don't just run away from it
• and we'd be a safer nation because folks nfah (not from around here) would stick out like sore thumbs

Yes, I know that shareholders in airlines, refiners, hotels, et al will insist that Americans have a God-given right to travel (usually in various levels of discomfort) at will.  (I have not found that language in the Constitution or Bill of Rights but I am certain there are any number of congressmen, lobbyists, corporate attorneys and PR firms more than willing to help me read between the quill inked lines and correct my erroneous thought.) 

And no, I'm not advocating government control or economic disincentives (travel taxes) or any of the 1,001 possible ways of coercing folks to do the right thing for themselves and the country.  I'm just asking my fellow Americans, the next time they think about going somewhere more than, say, 100 miles from home, they ask, "Is this trip worth the irreplaceable time from my life and do I really want to be groped to get there safely?"  If the answer is "no", or "Hell, No!", consider taking a car, a bus, the train...or better yet, just stay home.