This is about it. Everything we're doing now is no different than what they did in the past. We just forget it, or didn't realize it ... or didn't care. In the 1950s, cops could legally check whatever you had in your car and there wasn't much you could do about it. Today? The law says they can't, though, let's be certain, sometimes that isn't always the case.
But freedom goes beyond just how inconvenienced you are at the airport. This is where the idea of a 'police state' falters because in every non-free country, you're not allowed to say anything negative about the government. You're not allowed, in many instances, to believe in a certain God - or no god at all. You're not allowed to be gay (in Africa, they put people to death for being gay). They've got archaic laws that are absolutely horrid.
Is America the freedom mecca some believe? Absolutely not. But we never have been, so, let's ignore that disillusion and stop pretending this just happened over night. It didn't. We've always been a country that preserves the most basic freedoms, but still puts limits on freedoms - whether it was because you were Irish, a woman, black or now gay. I hope that changes. I think it will, as it has changed in every past struggle - but it's not new and to me, those rights, those liberties, are more important than whether some anti-American terrorist is being droned to death in Afghanistan or Pakistan or whatever.
