The trouble is that loving freedom and loving America often get mixed up. Often, when people talk about freedom, what they're really talking about is patriotism, waving the flag, or supporting the troops.
How much do we love freedom, really? The Republican Congress has passed the Military Commissions Act, a law that repeals habeas corpus and cuts at least half of the Bill of Rights to shreds, giving the President of the United States the powers of a dictator. Best of all, the law allows those powers to be executed behind the scenes, out of public view, so that the veneer of liberty remains undisturbed.
Sure, the Republicans passed the Military Commissions Act, but many Democrats voted for it too. The Democratic-controlled Congress has not repealed the law. Why?
Take a look at this chart, and you might understand why. It's a chart of the relative number of searches on Google for two terms: freedom and security. The chart covers the years 2004, 2005, 2006, and the beginning of 2007.
As you can see, in spite of all the big talk about love of liberty, as a whole, we seem to be searching for security much more than we search for freedom.
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