If it never existed, then it can't be true that our country's moral compass has been aligned toward civil liberties, unless we still haven't achieved that ideal after two centuries of struggle.
I don't have a specific position that I'm defending. I'm trying to learn some more historical perspective, and to understand your political philosophy in general.
60 years is the blink of an eye in world historical terms. An eyeblink. 60 years ago, the color of your skin determined where on the bus you had to sit.
In that contest, 20 years is the single beat of a heart. 20 years ago, the media was entirely controlled by a handful of corporations, and you had no means whatsoever of telling an audience as large as the one you have now that you think America died on 9/11.
Say you want to make the NSA drama especially bad for Obama, and assert that the worst of their snooping is just a couple years old. A couple years. Just a few neurons have fired in that interval. Maybe wait for a few more before we rush to judgement at a world historical scale.
I don't have a specific position that I'm defending. I'm trying to learn some more historical perspective, and to understand your political philosophy in general.