Guantánamo, krigen mod terror og krigen mod narkotika er bare én side af sagen. De amerikanske myndigheders magt er blevet stadigt udvidet på stort set alle områder gennem de sidste år, også ned i det helt små:
The American legal system also seems to have lost any sense of proportion. Christopher Ratte, a professor of archaeology, recently tried to buy his seven-year-old son a bottle of lemonade at a baseball game. He was handed a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, an alcoholic drink, by mistake. Officials noticed the boy sipping the drink and immediately whisked him off to hospital. He was fine. But the family was condemned to legal hell: the police at first put the seven-year-old into a foster home and a judge ruled that he could go home only if his father moved out. It took several days of legal wrangling to reunite the family.
Dette er fra The Economists omtale af Freedomhouses nye rapport om frihed i Amerika. Konklusionen er, at Freedomhouse om noget er for optimistisk med henblik på systemets evne til at rette sig selv. En kort opsummering af rapporten kan læses her.