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"we will never again be free from them"

Then, they have already won! We're as trapped as the Isrealites, right? We will never be free from the "religion of peace," is what you are resigning us to, right?

We thought we'd never be free from the cold war and MAD, right? What are you thinking, really? WWRRT?=What Would Ronald Reagan Think? Is terrorism our "Peace Dividend?"

Lincoln never restored all our freedoms after the Civil War, either. Lawyers have the bad habit of not following through on their promises, although Lincoln must be excused because of assassination.

No, they haven't won, and your logic is getting quite tortured. The USSR was a regime that could be brought down by traditional military force, and there were never any long-term communist "rebels" or "insurgents"---due to the doctrine of Marxism itself---that can work without a national power base.

That is quite different from a "religion" that preaches individual suicidal violence. I agree, freedoms are not always restored---but in many ways, there are more freedoms (like them or not) than 50 years ago: blacks can travel in peace throughout the U.S. without fear of lynching, We have freedom of speech that far surpasses those existing in Lincoln's time. We have sexual freedoms from the state that Jefferson would have gagged on. We have virtually unlimited freedom of religion that the Founders would have rejected. So, no, we don't always give up freedoms.

BTW, depending on how you look at the stats, terrorism rose during the Reagan years, and if he was FDR, and served out four terms, you can BET he would have declared a "war on terrorism" the minute Gorby took the plunge, because he was perceptive. Your "peace dividend" is that you are not saying "Seig Heil" or marching to the commissar's tunes. If you really think you are, then we have little to discuss.

Most of the Patriot Act is an illusion of security. It is a political response to a perceived need. What makes it an illusion is what the government is actually doing as opposed to what the PA authorizes it to do. Take air travel as an example. If govenment were actually forced to comply with the Second Amendment, the presumption would be that every American getting on an airplane in the US might have a gun. How many planes would be flown into buildings? Government has had the means and the authority to screen baggage for bombs since air travel became a reality. Government security is largely an oxymoron.

Most (all) terrorists fit a racial profile. Government "security" forbids racial profiling. Border control would seem to be a logical part of "homeland security". What is the government's record on border control and illegal immigration? What is the government's record on legal immigration for that matter? I think every one of the 911 terrorists was in the country legally.

What are the roots of terrorism and what is government doing about it? Some of the roots of terrorism are found in Israel and some in oil. The US rejected letting the post WWII Jews immigrate to America and ended up shipping them to Israel through the UN. Our government created the Israeli problem. And we keep meddling in the middle-east because we refuse to drill and produce our own oil and by refusing to pay market prices for Opec oil.

Government courts seem determined to extend the rights of citizens to non-citizens while denying citizens the Constitutional protections promised in the Second, Fourth, Fifth and a slew of other portions of the Constitution. Government "security" is more about protection for politicians than protection for American citizens. And just as government planning and government education are oxymorons, so is "homeland security" under the "patriot" act. Calling this the "patriot" act is offensive and pure propaganda. The results of the act will not be patriotic nor will it result in the same level of security that would result from government simply using common sense and successfully using the powers that it already had.