Liberal Targeting Versus Conservative Profiling (Part I)

Targeting is much more severe than profiling. Profiling is defined as the act or process of learning information about someone based on what is already known whereas targeting is defined as a place, thing, or person at which an attack is aimed. Profiling is scientific whereas targeting simply identifies one trait or characteristic of a group, individual, or corporation. That trait or characteristic can be political ideology, ethnicity, gender, income, sexual preference, gun owner, citizenship, and so forth.

Liberals hate the fact many conservatives want to profile groups of people. For instance, conservative immigration laws want to profile Hispanics to find illegal aliens or profile Muslims at airports for security reasons. Liberals claim this is racial profiling – profiling groups of people solely on their race. This is not true. For example, the profiling of potential terrorists is more than just targeting Muslims as a whole – it is much more scientific. A terrorist profile is much more informative and includes specific information such as gender, age, citizenship, heightened security, and even the day of the year. For instance, we know that a terrorist is not only more likely to be a Muslim, but also a male between the ages of 23 and 45 and will have citizenship in a Middle Eastern country. Profiling narrows the search and does not target a specific group of people. In fact, security may be heightened on certain days of the year where the probability or chance of confronting potential terrorists goes up. In the case of immigration laws, Hispanics are only confronted over their citizenship status if they have been detained for another offense and they cannot provide credible identification documents such as a valid driver’s license. In other words, all Muslims and Hispanics are not targeted when profiling is used.

In fact, the Obama administration has enhanced Muslim profiling for national security reasons. For proof we need to look no further than the administration’s drone program which has expanded exponentially under Obama. But the drone program does not only kill terrorists, it kills innocent Muslim civilians who by chance happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hence, increased drone activity can be seen more as targeting Muslims than profiling conducted at national airports.