Tom, I don’t understand. Your article seems to imply questioning the government is somehow unAmerican.

You profess to have Libertarian values of freedom unrestricted by government.

It seems that when push comes to shove, though, you regard anyone who questions the actions of the government when it limits freedom as very nearly a traitor.

It is usually accepted in a democracy that people can love their country, be good citizens, have served in the Armed Forces, and still question policies and practices. It’s a duty.

If they are good policies, they can stand the scrutiny. If they are not, that needs to be established.

There are people who think cover-ups are hiding something, maybe even incompetence. There are folks who understand bureaucracies that are not accountable may become more interested in covering their mistakes than functioning well. Those people are not traitors. If those bureaucracies are the police and intelligence agencies, some of us believe it is even more important to hold them accountable in the interest of maintaining a free country.

When dissent and questioning are regarded as unpatriotic, as suggested by Cheney and others, dictatorships follow. Voting isn’t needed, because the only patriotic thing to do is support unquestioningly the present regime. Everyone knows what is patriotic.

Democracies don’t do that, or they aren’t democracies.

Not a suspect, but still a detainee, U.S. won’t release or deport Ivory Coast man

Frankly, I don’t like that. It might be OK, and it needs to be questioned.

I know, it’s “them”. It’s always “them”, until the “thems” are gone, then it’s someone else. We've seen that on a large scale. Until it’s everyone else. Is it unpatriotic to believe the government should not be able to hold a person indefinitely without cause? Is “habeus corpus” a fancy legal term implying nothing? Apparently some people think so.

There are a lot of people who believe as I, that in a democracy it is the duty of the citizen to question, to insist on performance, and the duty of the government to withstand the scrutiny. I’m aware there are secrets, and they need to be kept. It's important enough to repeat that some patriotic Americans know that having the federal police and intelligence agencies operating without restraint or oversight is a far more dangerous situation than any secret which might escape. After all, there aren't a lot of secrets in there the enemy doesn't have. The secrets are only from the American people.

It is also the duty of a citizen to support his country, to live within the laws, to pay taxes, to serve in the Armed Forces.

When it gets to the point the article and you seem to imply is the only one acceptable, that the FBI, the CIA, and the politicians aren’t accountable, that we can’t question and debate, then we do not have the America I was raised to love. We won’t have the America for which the people we honor today fought and died.

Arf