By Chuck Baldwin August 23, 2005 It appears that a strengthened U.S.A. Patriot Act will soon sail through Congress with little opposition or consternation on the part of the American people. The new Patriot Act is even more stringent than the original. In addition, many of the more egregious elements of the Patriot Act which were originally scheduled to sunset are made permanent in the latest version. And the vast majority of the American people do not seem to mind. For one thing, Americans seem to have accepted the notion that they must rely on the federal government to take care of them. Lost to most is an independent, self-reliant spirit. After all, Americans already look to Uncle Sam for food stamps, welfare payments, commercial and farm subsidies, and faith-based handouts; why should they object to the federal government's promise to now provide their complete security even if it does mean the sacrifice of their liberties? To most Americans, security seems much more valuable than freedom! It is incumbent upon each of us to remember that this is exactly the way Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party took control in Germany. They did not seize power by force; the German people happily gave them power on the promise of national security. Since 9/11, even those Americans who in the past have championed freedom and independence now demonstrate an obvious readiness to gladly yield their liberties. It does not seem to matter one iota that they are losing their right of privacy and their right to be secure in their own homes. When told that the Patriot Act is practically a carbon copy of Hitler's Enabling Act, most Americans either yawn with indifference or retort with disbelief. They seem to be oblivious to reality. For some, their personal support for President Bush will not allow them to look objectively at the details of his Patriot Act (or virtually anything else he does). They truly don't want to believe that Bush could ever promote something untoward. Yet, was this not the same reasoning used by the German people in the 1930's? They loved and trusted Hitler so much, they could not bring themselves to believe that anything he did could be wrong. Americans need to reread the principles expressed by their Founding Fathers. Specific to the topic, Thomas Jefferson rightly said, "In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." It would seem many Americans today no longer believe that. For others, the fact that they do not believe themselves to have yet been personally affected by the new Gestapo-like powers given to the executive branch by the Patriot Act gives them a sense of (false) peace. Their attitude is usually expressed by statements such as, "Well, if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to fear." Of course, such thinking is extremely naive and short-sighted.