GOP Debate Dec 15, 2015: Security Vs. Liberty - Are some rights more important than others?

Our Constitution was written with the "assumption" that various key values would remain intrinsic components of American society....they have not.

Our enemies are both foreign and domestic, are not easily identified, and may even be holding positions within local, state and federal government...no, I'm not specifically talking about the "usual suspects", who I suspect are less a threat than the local powers. For example, Dearborn Michigan is reputedly adopting sharia law come 1 January.

Sadly, but no less honestly, "freedom" as we have come to know it, is probably impossible when there is so much risk and so little unity. The best case scenario is that we know even less of the "real" story than the wisest armchair commentators speculate, and the powers that be are already well ahead of the situation (which is where I place my bets, by the way). Worst case? We've become complacent in a society where we've been able to do so much, for so long, we simply cannot fathom how quickly we could descend into a third-world scenario of unrest, if not civil war.

The question isn't so much what we do from here on out (that should be obvious), but how we got here in the first place. I feel that is best answered by admitting that we've traded a great deal of the ideology that made us great in our well-intentioned desire to elevate by law, rather than principle.

At the end of the day, I may not like the current administration, and may trust the various candidates for President little more...but I don't think any of these people are motivated by a desire to squelch personal freedoms. If our government needs to bend the Bill of Rights a little to ensure we don't have a future where beheadings are conducted on the lawns of county courthouses...I'm not wholly against it.

The danger will be if our government fails when it comes time to lay that power aside...or if our enemies gain control of that same said system. In either event, it won't matter much, as that would be the prelude to nightmares no sane person is hoping for.

The 4th Amendment has a prohibition against "unreasonable searches and seizures". So the question is, what is reasonable? And is "listening and watching" equivalent to searching.
When the Founders wrote the 4th Amendment, what they had in mind was searches if property. Now I feel that includes things like digital files and the like (without a warrant, that is), but I do think that it is worth considering.
I guess in my mind what it comes down to is that while NSA and other agencies have the capability to easily listen to my calls and read my email, I know that they won't - really can't - unless I do something to flag myself such as using certain key words or visiting known terrorist-frequented sites. If I were a terrorist, or even a law-abiding citizen that has relatives in Yemen, I would be concerned.

As for the rest, the Constitution does not have a "Prime Directive", if you will, so I don't buy into the notion that the 2d Amendment is more important than the 5th or the 4th. If anything, I thing the rest of them pretty much grow out of the 1st Amendment, but that's just me.