The Cost of Freedom

In a recent poll collected by ABC news reports that 63% of American people think the secret program by the NSA to tap United States citizens phone lines is acceptable. Wane Simmons, a former CIA operative says that the people who are responsible for leaking information on the NSA's secret program, along with the reporters who published the story, should be punished with jail time. We are given the same line in defence of the NSA's program every time scrutiny is brought upon it: "It is to protect your freedom."
This does bring up an important point. The freedoms we enjoy as American citizens come with a heavy cost. And, in our generation, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 demonstrated that cost. However, to forgo our liberty, the very essence of our freedom, is absolutely unacceptable. It is our freedom that hundreds of thousands of our finest military personal fight and die for daily. It is for love of freedom that we rise at the start of every football and baseball game and put our hands over our hearts while the national anthem is played. No, freedom is not free; there is a price to pay. But when we surrender our freedom and liberties, we loose the very essence of why we fight.
The cost of freedom is responsibility. To live in a free society is to bear the responsibility for for our own actions, and to recognize that as a nation, as a unified body of people, we are responsible for the assurance that all Americans can live as free citizens. That is the price tag that comes attached to our freedom.
Shouldn't we all be discussed at the mantra: "If you've done nothing wrong, then why does it bother you?" This is nothing more than a cleaver declaration of war against the American people; the very people we are supposed to be defending. Those who use this conning mantra are, at its essence, saying that not one of us can be trusted so we are all suspect. They are pointing a finger at every one of their neighbors and calling them out as a terrorist. If freedom doesn't belong to us, then for whom is it reserved?
Cody Hobbs