Really? Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, Japanese Americans thrown in camps, federal troops firing on protesting war veterans, heck even as recently as the 1970s the government had freakin' wage and price controls.
And you're saying that none of those stack up to how much free reign the government has right now. Because they've, uh, arrested some dudes in Afghanistan and shipped 'em off to Cuba and stuff. And made airport workers federal employees.
Yup, "never before", all right.
The Patriot Act, and other similar pieces of legislation
Such as? Specifics.
have allowed government officials to spy on US citizens.
You mean like the government was doing to people like MLK in the '60s? Yes, it's only because of the Patriot Act that the government can do this....
It is very likely that every word you say on the telephone, and ever word you type in an email, or anywhere else is being processed by some alphabet agency that is looking for certain phrases, or key words.
This story came out a year or two ago, it's called "Echelon". What's not very likely, of course, is that anyone in government is actually assigned to actually listen to you call the pizza place on the phone and order that anchovy-and-onion. Most likely your conversation is run through some algorithm to try to find the word "bomb" or something similar, and if it's not found, the data is tossed away. Hardly cause for panic.
We are told that thought they've been given all kinds of new power, we can trust them not to abuse it.
Who's telling you this? Don't buy it. I don't claim we can "trust" government not to abuse power. But let's not jump the gun. Do you think the government is abusing their power in some instance? If so, tell us all, we'd like to know.
But, that is today, or right now, maybe they've already begun to misuse that power, we have no idea.
Heck: today, or right now, maybe an asteroid which will destroy mankind is headed our way. We have no idea.
Do you have some actual information to give us, or are you just here to spread baseless scare-mongering?
won't we someday accept the following words, "For the good of the country....Free Speech can no longer be as free"?
Some people have accepted this long ago - they are called leftists and they created laws about so-called "hate speech" and "hate crimes". Go talk to them about this issue. You're barking up the wrong tree.
Government officials can and probably already do monitor your every word in any electronic medium in which you speak.
Actually, they cannot and probably don't. Do you have any idea how much data you're talking about? It's one thing to gather this data and filter it through some algorithm to try to catch certain words, it's quite another to assign an army of "government officials" to actually pore over every last bit of data manually. What a lousy job that would be.
but the day is coming when, "For the good of the country", your speech will be limited by government.
Again, the day is already here. You can be prosecuted, or prosecuted differently, merely for saying certain words. I suggest you start focusing your efforts on repealing all "hate speech" and "hate crime" laws.
I don't understand how we can know for a fact that the F.B.I. used the little "Prefered Customer" card hanging off your key chain to track certain purchases and go so far as to look people up and question them, and that the Patriot Act has already been used on the WOD, yet are suppose to assume that future abuse is not possible. Or are you saying that such abuse is survivable by a free society? That America is strong enough to snap back from such thing?