This country was founded to provide citizens with protection from the whims of the King.  The Bill of Rights supplemented the Constitution and instituted among other things habeus corpus and the right to a speedy trial, as well as freedom of speech.  The citizen had absolute rights against the government, unlike Britain whose King had enormous freedoms.  We have prided ourselves as being different than the USSR, China or Nazi Germany.  Countless brave men and women died for our freedoms and rights.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44833756/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/#.TpFxXZsUqdA

And now we are back to where every citizen lives at the whim of the government and we have few, if any rights.  Certainly none to privacy, none to our “castle”, and if the President wants to he can imprison us forever and/or kill any of us.  We have given them away in the interest of “security”.  Freedom isn’t cheap, there are losses involved in following a high moral ground, and the US has taken the cheap way out.

This isn’t the country I was born into, nor is it one for which I have much respect anymore.  It is very close to a totalitarian regime, which is only a matter of time.  The Tea Party and it’s accomplices the religious extremists will buy an election sooner or later, and religious freedom will be gone, as the extremists legislate their fundamentalist doctrines.  Sort of what the Taliban did in Afghanistan.  Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, John Hagee, et al, will hold the moral barometers.  Ridiculous.

It’s a sad state of affairs for anyone who loved America and what it stood for.  This noble effort lasted a bit over 200 years.  However, there are other countries which continue the experiment.

Arf