I'd like to speak with you today not about the NSA or any of the vast federal spying apparatus that has so eroded our personal and financial privacy; nor about the federal healthcare bureaucracy that undermines our medical privacy; nor about TSA demanding access to our physical bodies at the airport; nor about the countless drug laws, smoking laws, helmet laws, ID laws,and Big Gulp laws that come together to make up our soft police state, or nanny state if you prefer. Now I say "soft" police state because while we know America is heading down a very dangerous path, we should respect those who suffered in the very real, not-soft police states of the twentieth century. There is no comparison, and we shouldn't use the term lightly. But if we don't see the growing parallels between totalitarian societies in history and modern day America we have only ourselves to blame.