The Thanksgiving holiday has traditionally been one of America’s biggest family travel days. This year the price of air travel has gone up. This suggests that people’s willingness to fly to be with loved ones and friends will be tested.

The reason is simple; as prices for something rise, demand falls. This is the social analogue of the law of gravity. That’s the way the world works. Yes, more folks may travel this year than last year, the predicted increase is over 3 percent, but had the price not risen, even more would have flown.

Price includes much more than dollars paid for tickets. It is the totality of what’s given up. Here it includes time waiting, bad service, lines, and the escalating indignities imposed by the TSA. The last has substantially increased. This will produce problems, especially among those who rarely fly and are not inured to the humiliation of screening.

The TSA, the Transportation Security Administration (some call it Thousands Standing Around), exists to: “protect the nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.” Really?

Does anyone outside this dreaded agency believe this? Most of my friends still fly commercial. We increasingly dread the experience and we’re the majority.

The New York Times, generally a friend of intrusive government, reported this in a November 18 piece by Susan Stellin, “Pat-Downs at Airports Prompt Complaints.” She reported: “In the three weeks since the Transportation Security Administration began more aggressive pat-downs of passengers at airport security checkpoints, traveler complaints have poured in.

“Some offer graphic accounts of genital contact, others tell of agents gawking or making inappropriate comments, and many express a general sense of powerlessness and humiliation. In general passengers are saying they are surprised by the intimacy of a physical search usually reserved for police encounters.

“‘I didn’t really expect her to touch my vagina through my pants,’ said Kaya McLaren, an elementary schoolteacher from Cle Elum, Wash., who was patted down at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport last Saturday because the body scanner detected a tissue and a hair band in her pocket.” The agency responds to complaints by reporting a CBS News poll that 4 in 5 passengers support full-body scanners and urges “cooperation and patience” for passengers.

This general reaction is especially important for my town, Bozeman, Montana. We are blessed with a remarkably fine airport and have excellent service from several major airline companies. This has made living here possible for some whose business depends on them visiting distant places. I’ve logged over 2,000,000 miles, few from vacations, on one airline, and some of my friends have more.

The worst thing that could happen here is the Yellowstone Caldera blowing. We’d all be toast. For many, the second would be airplanes falling out of the sky or flying into buildings as a common occurrence. That would dramatically raise the costs of travel as people factored in risk. The third would be even more intrusive screening by TSA agents immune from counter pressures from disgruntled citizens.

We all have experienced unpleasant encounters or know someone who has. For example, when my mother was 89 she made her last trip here. On her return she was selected for especially intensive screening. She cried; I boiled. The son of a friend who had just graduated from Marine boot camp and was proudly in uniform was similarly selected at the San Diego, CA airport. He was the only service man in uniform in the immediate vicinity and his bags were torn apart and scattered by a non-English speaking TSA agent.

Much of this is the predictable consequence of PC constraints on dealing effectively with genuine fears of terrorists. Hence, TSA is widely perceived as burlesque Security Theater. While a conservative may be a liberal who’s been mugged, a libertarian will be a flyer whose mother, wife, or children have been groped.