In the so-called war on terror, it is becoming increasingly apparant that that one of the traditional defenses to a just war, the right to self-defense, is being increasingly marginalized. Self-Defense is seen as a basic human right. Courts are supposed to uphold it, in cases of individual conflict (breaking and entering, robbery, assault, etc).
Yet the adoption of first-strike, torture memos, interrogation techniques used at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, School of the Americas and successor training, adoption of "El Salvador" solution use of death squads as official policy, mass searches and seizures, penning of protestors at National political conventions, and abandoning the defenseless abroad (Darfur) and at home (New Orleans) (cont'd)
serve as a backdrop to the latest erosion of individual rights in the mass wiretapping of US citizens in their homes. This was the sort of issue that led to the Magna Carter in England, that every man's home was his castle.
Now every man's home is the government's peephole. And the government will insist you have no legal right to defend yourself. If the NRA gets aroused over issues of gun control, how much more should free citizens be aroused over the seeming revocation of their rights to protect their own lives. Witness the stop-loss orders given to soldiers in Iraq, even ones with multiple tours, in a form of slow-motion Russian Roulette. Witness the evacuees trying to flee New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina, who were turned back by shotguns while fleeing for safety. Read up on the El Salvador tactics, for a fuller understanding of how even people suspected of sympathizing with resistors were killed.