Whithout a doubt, the war on terrorism affects the freedoms of the American people. The problem we have here is that we were told after 911 that the terrorists attacked us because they hate our freedoms. Well, then one can gather by the restrictions on our freedoms that the terrorists have won. I could only talk about airport security in order to validate this point, but we can do better than that. Airport security has become such a burdensome beast that many find that it is not even worth going through the ordeal. Americans have been limited as to what items they can even bring on a plane. The ridiculous notion that travelers cannot even bring nail clippers on to an airplane is beyond ludicrous. Then they went so far as to not let mothers bring bottles on for their children. People are pulled out of the security checkpoint and searched. It does not matter if they are a ninety year old grandmother, or a five year old boy.
We have a much more serious problem than that, and that is the diminishing right to the freedom of speech. I can tell you from personal experience that many of the articles I write are censored by the major players on the Internet. Google is just one of these companies. To be fair I believe they are only being careful of the content they publish due to a higher than normal amount of government scrutiny, but this does diminish the diversity of ideas that we all find so exhilarating.
To me the most fearful thing to have come to pass was the Patriot Act. This was a document which was passed within ninety days after 911. Anyone who has watched the government work over a period of time knows that such things cannot happen quickly. That means, that it is more than likely that the Patriot Act had been written before the attacks of 911, especially when you consider the fact that both Senate and Congressional versions of the bill were ready for passage. This bill basically gives the government the right to declare any entity, or individual a terrorist. You can then be secreted away and held for an indefinite period of time. You can then be tried and convicted by a three judge military panel and then executed.
We must also consider the new powers that President Bush has given to himself. In Presidential orders, President Bush has determined that he is above the Congress and has stripped away the checks and balances of the United States. Let us not only blame President Bush, many Presidents have been writing Presidential orders for some time. Any one of these orders can be determined to be not such a cataclysmic problem in and of itself, but when you add together the power of all of these orders, you have the makings for a dictatorship which will be brought into power through political bureaucracy.