Looking back over the last 10 years and thinking about where many of us were and how we felt when the towers fell is surreal. These are sad thoughts. But what I find even more saddening is the fact that we have allowed our country to become more and more of a police state over the last 10 years. And apparently, the end is not in site…and will likely only become worse.

When the Department of Homeland Security was launched after 9/11 and the Patriot Act was launched as a bill that would last only 4 years, many freedom loving Americans squabbled. Most turned to those rebels and told them to “shut up,” that it was necessary to protect America. Then we allowed the TSA to militarize our airports and treat us like cattle. Then came the unsecured and blatant violation of personal privacy when travelers data was being collected. And of course the full body pat downs of children and colonoscopies full-body scans.

Oh, but a little before the whole body scan debacle was of course the hush-hush hiring of Ex-Stasi Spy Markus Wolf by the DHS. Who better to know how to teach the government how to spy on its own citizens and invoke citizen to citizen tattle telling than an ex-East German communist?

Is it any surprise that in the years following Wolf’s tenure as a consultant to DHS prior to his death we have now seen programs develop out of DHS that include the government asking its citizens to report on their neighbors, and the institution of a secret police force called “Viper Team”. It’s rumored they great each other with a hearty, “Shield and sword!”

Don’t forget the vans with X-ray patrolling our streets as well…

But never fear, because we’ve been told all of this is temporary just until we destroy terrorism. Of course out of the other side of the governments mouth is the fact that they’ve told us that terrorism is a battle that we will wage forever.

So what we take from that is this: Janet Napolitano (audio, click to play) telling us that we will never again have pre-9/11 freedom in the United States. (The clip comes from the No Agenda Podcast, in which Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak dissect the modern media message.)

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin