This was Senator Rand Paul last week speaking out against the constitutional abuses of the PATRIOT Act on the floor of the United States Senate:

We do have a right to privacy. You have a right not to have the government reading your Visa bill every month. We do have rights and we should protect these, but we shouldn’t be so fearful that we say well, I’m a good person, I don’t care, just look at my records. If you do, you’re setting yourself up for a day when there will be a tyranny, when there will be a despot who comes into power in the United States and who uses those rules that you said, 'oh, I don’t have anything to hide'.

And this was Rand Paul a few days later on the Sean Hannity radio program:

I'm not for profiling people on the color of their skin or on their religion. But I would take into account where they've been traveling and perhaps you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they've been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. They wouldn't be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after. They should be deported or put in prison.

So he’s against the government spying on American citizens - but if Muslims are attending speeches that Rand doesn’t like - then they should be deported or thrown in jail?

Again - just for listening to one speech or being in the wrong place at the wrong time and listening to the wrong person speak - bam - you’re in the slammer!

Pursuing that sort of policy is like putting the PATRIOT Act on steroids.

Yet that’s just what Rand Paul wants - security against Muslims no matter what the cost to our American ideals.

If you’re blowing up our constitution to keep us safe…you’re still blowing up the constitution. And for nearly a decade - in the name of security - our nation has changed dramatically.

Ten years ago we were not a nation that threw the full force of our military into foreign countries without cause.

Ten years ago we weren’t a nation that resorted to war crimes to gather intelligence.

Ten years ago we weren’t a nation that irradiated and groped people before they boarded an airplane.

Ten years ago we weren’t a nation that spied on its citizens’ library records and wiretapped phones without a warrant.

Ten years ago we weren’t a nation that put someone on a terror watch list just because they snapped a photo of a famous landmark.

And ten years ago we weren’t a nation that even conceived of locking people up or kicking them of the country just for attending a speech.

But today - we’re all of these things.

And we’ve gotten here step-by-step - with each new law or action seemingly insignificant - but when combined with all the others produce a radical transformation of America.

They say whoever brings up Hitler first loses the argument - so maybe this is now a lost argument - but Germany in the 1930s gives us a fascinating insight into how radically - and rapidly - a culture can change with very little outcry from its citizens.

Right after the end of World War II, Chicago-based journalist Milton Mayer was struggling with the questions of why good, average Germans like the local baker, butcher, and clothing-maker sat quietly as their nation was completely transformed into one that became totally and utterly lawless.

How could this happen?

To find out, he spent a year in Germany, getting to know very, very well ten "average Germans" - from a baker to a University professor - and he found the answer to his question in their stories.

As Mayer wrote in his book, "They Thought They Were Free" - :

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security.

Just like here in America - we’ve all gradually gotten used to this new security state that’s all around us.

Mayer goes on to share the words of a college professor about how surely everyone would have noticed this great transformation if it all happened at once - but when carried out step-by-step - no one really realizes what’s going on.

He said:

If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked…But of course this isn't the way it happens.

In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you to not be shocked by the next.

Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

The PATRIOT Act seemed appropriate to those of us who were still shocked one month after 9/11. Some of us. And with the PATRIOT Act in place - then war in Afghanistan seems reasonable.

And with war in Afghanistan - then war in Iraq is no big deal.

And with war raging against Muslims - then it seems reasonable that greater caution needs to be taken at home against Muslims.

Then one Member of Congress uses his power to investigate American Muslim communities in a McCarthy-esque witch hunt that would be Peter King - and we're imprisoning Muslims without trial, torturing them often to death, all with the knowledge and complicity of the White House and Congress.

And then a US Senator calls for jailing people who attend speeches that he doesn’t like.

And sooner or later - something happens and we realize what’s going on.

As Mayer's German professor said:

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you.

The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jew swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.

The world you live in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were in at all.

The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.

But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed.

Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.

Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.

How much longer until we Americans reach that moment - that moment when we all realize that the nation we thought we knew - the nation we’d fight and die for - the nation that we’d raise our families in - is no longer the America we once knew?

Our nation is on a march toward catastrophe - and it will not move off this path on its own.

We must take back control and restore the America that our founding fathers envisioned - before a book is written 50 years from now asking why average Americans like us did nothing as our nation went crazy.

It’s time for all of us to wake up.

That's The Big Picture.