It's also a bit surprising that meeting people at the gate is thought of as some bizarre behavior that only happened in ancient antiquity. All of these restrictions, and all of these new bureaucracies are brand new, completely created and maintained over the administrations of only two presidents.

You can still dos it in Australia, for domestic flights (albeit you have to pass the security check.) Still, I was quite surprised the first time I noticed so.

Methinks he was referring to not what we think of now as the "gate" (the extended building reaching to the plane), but in fact walking right out on the tarmac.

Nah, I meant what we think of now as "gate". For instance, I remember going out to meet people at the gate at SFO in the 1990s. I'm not quite old enough - or perhaps didn't grow up in a small enough town? - to remember routinely walking out on the tarmac to greet a plane.