In New Year’s Eve 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law. This bill further erodes our civil liberties by allowing the President to indefinitely detain—hold without legal counsel—anyone he declares to be a terrorist, including American citizens. Even though President Obama, in a signing statement, claimed he would never use this power, he now has that ability. And so will any future President.

Back in 1945, at the end of World War II, American journalist Milton Mayer went to Germany to find out why the Nazis had been allowed to destroy that country’s civil liberties. One of the Germans Mayer interviewed for his book They Thought They Were Free explained it like this: “To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it…each step so small, so inconsequential, so well explained…one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”

So I ask you: Regarding the gradual erosion of America’s civil liberties, how high is the corn in the field?