We both are for viligence. However, where I have seem to be apprehensive and scepticial about America's national gov't, you seem to indicate a significant level of fear and indignation. If I'm reading you wrong, please correct me. I'm not attempting to be argumentative with you, I just don't like over reaction to events, especially when all the facts aren't known. I don't think that mindset works very well in a free society as ours.
I don't believe America is on the road to becoming a totalitarian state. I don't believe comparing America's future with the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Pol-Pot serves any good purpose, except may be to arouse the malcontents and extremists in our nation.
And if ole Ben Franklin was alive today, I believe his outlook on things would be much different. While many things remain th esame, 225 years can still have a way of altering beliefs and changing opinions of people.
Hard to tell, at least you've kept it polite which is more than a lot do here.
you seem to indicate a significant level of fear and indignation. If I'm reading you wrong, please correct meI am deeply concerned that the federal governmnet will turn even more tyrannical than it is. I remember growing up in '50s without 95% of the federal government that we have today. We didn't have to lock our doors, you could buy firearms at the hardware store, and the overall tax burden was considerable less. Since then the government has extorted a significant fraction of my total life's work, burdened me with hundreds of thousands of pages of federal regulations that I can go to jail for, and worked very hard to make sure I'm defenseless.
My life is not any better not that it was then because of anything the government did. Any improvements came from private industry. The car I drive now has 40 hp less than the one I had in '65, and cost almost 8 times as much thanks primarily to federal regulations. I pay about half of my income to government at all levels, a figure which creeps up every year. And what do I get for it. I government that can't keep a bunch of arabs from destroying innocent civilians. Now the selfsame government that has grown fat on the backs of working Americans is whining that it needs more powers. Well no one killed 5000 American civilians in the '60s (although I did get to learn about M-16s, L shaped ambushes, grenades and all that crap at government expense during that decade) Frankly I think we'd be better off if they got rid of some of the huge bureaucracy that they have to micro-mismanage our lives and devoted some of those resources to:
I don't believe America is on the road to becoming a totalitarian state
I disagree here. Gun control, Internal passports, government carte blanche to pry into every fact about you, secret trials, asset seizure without trial, etc. is totalitarianism.
And lastly, (Ben F.)I believe his outlook on things would be much different
I disagree on this too. Human nature is exactly the same as it was in 1776. The nature of government is the same too, except King George would never dream of looting a much as government in the US loots today. If they were able to see us today, I think the founding fathers would turn from us in disgust at how we squandered the freedom that they bought with their lives their fortunes and their sacred honor.