[glocksman]

Interesting take, and pretty much the stuff I've thought for years. The explanation is that the chains have been forged one by one over many years through many well-intentioned pieces of legislation.

If all of today's current restrictions on liberty had been imposed all at once, the American people would have risen in revolution and hanged the perpetrators from the nearest lamppost.

But, like boiling a frog by turning up the heat a little at a time, we accept the restrictions because individually they seem so small or they don't directly affect us.

Taken as a whole, however, we get what we have today.

[missileboy]

All of which is accomplished insidiously through a process known as the Hegelian Dialectic.....

Love your screen name! I am a Glockaholic myself.