I'm passionate about what I see happening around me. When I see: gross injustice, willful ignorance, barbarous brutality, or the stone-cold bullshit of propaganda and censorship being played out on the public stage, something inside of me cries out against it!

Restricting the right to peacefully protest, fingerprinting tens of thousands of schoolchildren, erecting a culture of pervasive surveillance, fighting unjust wars, that kill, maim and disfigure the innocent; these and a thousand other indignities and brutalities, are not the footprints of a society headed for the green fields of freedom. They are the tracks of a culture walking the hard stone road to tyranny.

I want to continue to live in a country where freedom thrives. I want to enjoy the right to think freely and speak openly. To hear and express opinion, without fear of being censored or punished, because my thoughts, or the thoughts of others, are not the politically correct or popular opinions of the day.

I wish to enjoy a fair reward for my labor, to live peaceably with my neighbor, in a country where the rights of individuals, to act, in accordance with laws that are just - and in accordance with their own deeply held personal beliefs, are above all preserved. Where privacy is a right, not a privilege, where freedom is a fact, not a platitude.

Yet for all my bravado, I feel alone in many ways. I am afraid that I have even been cowed of late. I begin to wonder if voices like mine, who do not wish to see a country where children are fingerprinted like criminals, or to live inside a culture of 'cradle to grave' surveillance, will be ignored. In my heart of hearts, I am afraid that a lesser nation is coming to pass.

Already it seems to me, that I live in a society where every citizen is viewed as a potential enemy of their own government. Once this mentality becomes endemic, it will define the way in which governments relate to their people. It will breed a socially toxic bacterium of institutional fear, informational distrust and identity suspicion. Everybody will be a either a potential victim or criminal; both types will be constantly monitored. It is already happening...

What I'm most afraid of, is that the ordinary everyday folk, who are the real hope of the future of freedom here; continue to maintain an enveloping silence, feign ignorance, change the subject, look away. When they see the rights our ancestors gave their lives to preserve being eroded in front of them. I think for me, that fear eats away at my optimism most of all.

I don't want to look into the eyes of my own child one day and say to them, that the reason they are not free, their government so callous, unjust and oppressive, is because I and millions like me, lacked the courage to fight to preserve the most basic and valuable of freedoms.

That we accepted trinkets, in place of treasures. Were pacified with platitudes and tolerated lies, when we should have demanded honesty and transparency- Surrendered to fear and ignorance, when we should have shown courage and wisdom, thus ignoring our better natures, and finally, bargained away our permanent liberties for an illusory cage of temporary safety.