I'll keep this brief.

Yesterday I was subjected to an illegal, warrantless, and groundless "physically invasive" pat down by a TSA agent. A stranger grabbed my genitals -- this wasn't your simple frisking before entering an airport terminal. This was how you treat a prisoner in a maximum security prison. I posted the chilling details of my encounter on my Google+ profile here.

I fly often, and have never been subjected to anything this extreme, disgusting, and profoundly un-American. Aside from violating the Fourth Amendment, what was done to me violated the founding spirit of our nation.

Also, on a recent cross-country road trip I was repeatedly pulled over for "speeding." I wasn't speeding, or was going so marginally above the speed limit as to be impossible to prevent. Pulling over motorists without cause is becoming more prevalent in many areas of the US. It's done to intimidate, it's done to raise revenues (speeding tickets), and it's done to casually search your vehicle and your person without probable cause or a warrant.

This is the kind of thing I'd expect in a third-world dictatorship, or in Syria. Not in the United States of America.

The U.S. is rapidly turning into a police state, as Canada's Calgary Herald recently pointed out in an excellent op-ed penned by Kris Kotarski.

How dare we condemn human rights abuses in the Middle East when we treat productive members of our own society -- frequent business travelers -- like drug mules and felons.

The TSA is unconstitutional. Security at the expense of our most basic freedoms is not freedom at all.

I've disagreed with some of Ron Paul's economic views (I think getting rid of the Fed and rapidly transitioning to a new gold standard would create many unintended consequences, and harm middle class folks who don't have any exposure to precious metals; their savings are in US-dollar denominated bank accounts) -- despite this, he is the ONLY CANDIDATE who seems to care that our civil rights have been egregiously rolled back over the past decade.

This alone makes him worth my vote. And I can't in good conscience vote for President Obama's re-election.

I've heard supporters of the current administration say that the TSA and other violations of our freedoms were enacted by his predecessor. Fair enough -- but Mr. Obama has had THREE YEARS to roll back the infrastructure of the police state and restore some of our constitutionally guaranteed rights. He has not done so.

Maybe Ron Paul will be able to reverse some of what this country has become. At least he talks about the problem. That's a start.

Because this isn't the America I learned about in school:

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