MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Passengers aboard a Southwest Airlines flight helped wrestle a fellow passenger to the floor Tuesday night after he tried to force his way into the cockpit, law enforcement officials said.Consider it a tribute to the heroes of Flight 93. The official memorial website has over 1000 preliminary entries, and some choices are going to be announced next week, apparently.
The incident happened aboard Flight 2161, which was traveling from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to West Palm Beach, Florida.
Christopher Egyed, 37, made "threatening comments about the government" and tried to make his way into the cockpit, Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office spokesman Paul Miller said.
"He had been acting in an obnoxious way throughout the flight," Miller said.
Egyed exchanged punches with a flight attendant before passengers joined the scuffle and subdued him, authorities said.
"They used duct tape to tie him up," FBI spokeswoman Judy Orijuela said.
The pilot did not declare an emergency, and the plane landed without further incident at 9:45 p.m. ET in West Palm Beach.
I am reminded of a recent essay by David Warren, part of which reads:
To my mind, prudence is inseparable from the question of martyrdom.The contrast could not be clearer.
Here is a question nobody seems to have asked, perhaps owing to "political correctness". Was it prudent for Islamist terrorists to hijack airliners and fly them into office buildings? Is it prudent for others to attach explosive belts and blow people up in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere?
The idea of murder-suicide as a form of martyrdom is something that has come out of post-modern Islam, rather in the way mindless tolerance has come out of post-modern Christianity. In both cases, I think, a parody of the faith has turned by increments into an inversion of it.
Murder-suicide as an act of martyrdom would have been inconceivable before the emergence of the Wahabi sect in modern Arabia, and cognate movements in Egypt, Pakistan, and elsewhere. This is worth remembering when we hear the demonic suggestion that, "Religious martyrs are the same everywhere, they are all just fanatics."
As a Christian, I cannot be opposed to martyrdom, per se. So it is important to grasp the difference between what makes a Christian, and what makes this kind of Muslim, martyr. At the very least, the Christian requires to be put to death by someone else; and only as the alternative to denying Christ. He must go out of his way not to endanger persons not involved, since martyrdom can do no good to someone unprepared for it.
It is necessary to make this distinction, in order to understand how, in extremis, not only Christians, but Jews, and some people of other faiths, have been able through the centuries to choose martyrdom, as a prudent act -- each believing that his own death is for the good of all people, including himself.
This seems shocking to the post-modern mind, for which self-preservation, if not actual cowardice, is the highest prudential good.
