Do you believe the FBI and NSA when they say more than 50 plots were foiled by NSA surveillance?

[Savannahmann]

79. If you prefer that sort of policing, then you are entitled to your opinion

However I am seriously disturbed when I see police in more armor than our troops had at the beginning of the Iraq war, with state of the art machine guns, and armored cars, moving from house to house. Among other interests I have is a healthy respect for history, and that scene has never gone to a good place once in history. Perhaps we will be the first. Perhaps we will be the first in history to have a paramilitary trained police force that didn't end up authoritarian. Perhaps that slippery slope that history says is nearly a given, isn't.

The problem is this however. We keep giving more authority, more widely universal powers to the Government, state, city, and Federal. powers we can't get back, ever. Powers like the paramilitary police you are so cool with. You are cool with them now, but what would it take for you to be less cool with them?

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/police-shooting-of-elderly-woman-tragic-unfortunat/nD9wC/

For me, we give the police too much leeway, too much understanding, and not enough scrutiny. We used to shout question authority from the rooftops. Now, we shout sit down and shut up to anyone who does question authority.

You go for what feels right for you. For me, I am going to keep sounding the alarm, because where we're headed has never once ended well in history. Not once. The Government was intended to be By, For, and Of the people. Yet the People are given less and less say in what the Government is doing. When someone does question, they are denounced immediately, and the only thing discussed is the one raising the questions, not the questions they are raising.

Find a nation in history, just one, where paramilitary police ended up being a good thing. Most of those nations ended up with new constitutions, written in pencil.