Maybe I'm just naive, but y'all sound like weirdo conspiracy theorists.Maybe neither, Jazzo - but think of it as capitalism proved in action:
1 All government is *our power vested in others (ever read any Rousseau yet? - you might find him interesting, especially from a 'foundation of America' perspective)
2 All government depends for its existence on the wealth created by its citizens - in other words, they also spend *our money
3 The amount of power this structure gains thus tends to rise in inverse proportion to the freedoms enjoyed by its citizens
4 This is why historically no government has ever willingly ceded power back to its citizens - the motivation of the system runs entirely the other way
5 Thus it is vital that all who believe in individual liberty and personal freedom have to fight a continuous battle simply to maintain the advances forged over many hundreds of generations
A simple illustration: we tend to think of our modern times as the acme of freedom and liberty... well, in many ways yes, but before the French revolution I could have travelled throughout Europe without a passport, and would have paid no income tax. Like many such increases of control by the mechanisms of the modern nation state at the cost of its individual citizens, these features were brought in as expediencies at the time of conflict (the Napoleonic Wars). Guess what? ~ these 'temporary measures' never got repealed!
So, yes, Jazzo, keep a sensible head on your shoulders about loony conspiracist rednecks by all means, but don't underestimate the price we must pay in each and every generation to sustain the ideal of personal liberty: the price is vigilance.
A suspicious scrutiny of anything proposed by any government, especially under pretext of 'special measures in times of war', is merely the by-product....
