In America, you get a fair shake, or you're supposed to. Here, you're governed by law, not the whim of some swinish satrap. America is not a place where peaceful dissent should cost you your freedom, or even your life. Americans don't live in terror of their security police. All of this is arguably less true today than it was 20 years ago; it's certainly less true since Sept. 11, 2001. Strangely, it is America's conservatives, the people to whom personal liberty is a supreme value, who seem most willing to give it away. "If you aren't doing anything wrong, then you don't have anything to worry about," they say, while pushing new powers for law enforcement and the growing surveillance-industrial establishment. That, of course, is the cheapjack police-state justification; the sort you hear in countries that are said to be "not ready for democracy." It is most un-American in spirit, but the law-and-order bunch doesn't see it that way. Egged on by