Allow me offer my observations of travel to foreign countries from the perspective of an American. In 1998 I traveled to Japan where I was, *gasp*, FINGERPRINTED at immigration. In 2000 I traveled to Italy where I was put through a bomb-sniffing device and had my luggage tested with chemical swabs, all under the watchful gaze of a security guard with a submachine gun. Hell, when I went to Canada in August of 2001 they searched my car and personal effects for several hours and phoned the party I was going to meet in Ontario! So the U.S. is really just acclimatizing to the security conditions a lot of the world has had in place for all I know decades.

Furthermore, it cracks me up that everyone's wringing their hands over civil liberties now, when a few years ago the BATF under the Clinton regime (don't like the sound of those two words together, do you?) wanted to create a database of all gun owners. Historically, registration begets confiscation (e.g., Canada) In a *true* police state (e.g., NAZI Germany), only the police have guns...