I know the incidents your referring to,Kent State and I have never indicated that there have never been problems. One big difference, is there was quite an outrage back then over the happenings. Today people are mostly silent.

COINTELPRO Led to the Church Committe and helped spur the formation of new laws like the FISA act to limit govt intelligence gathering on US citizens, which has now been trampled over.

There is surely a large degree of truth in your statement about police as well, which makes me wonder why so many people want to give the police more power. It has been bad at times, but I argue in a more closed society with a stronger govt influence on the ordinary citizen, it would have been far far worse.

Instead of thinking that "well there have always been problems, so whatever" we should be thinking "if these problems existed before, imagine how terrible things are going to get if these post-9/11 trends continue".

So, thanks for unintentionally helping me make my point.

Making a relation between bush and Lincoln based on them both at one time having poor approval ratings is also..... not much of a similarity. Ok, they both have been unpopular at times... and? Some people dont care for either apples, or oranges. Just works out that way sometimes.