Unfortunately, it is true that to retain your rights, you must stand up for them. And sometimes that is uncomfortable. And sometimes people take it in the wrong direction, and end up giving the "control" side more ammunition. As a society, we tend to fail in recognizing what rights we want, because we see so many others as "them" and don't want them to have the same rights. In order to withhold the rights from them, we submit to horrible intrusions on our own rights. It is a difficult line to walk. Either rights are for everyone or for no one. We seem to go with the idea that they should be for us individually, not for those we suspect of doing something bad, whether that is on the large scale, such as in terrorism, or on the small scale, such as a misdemeanor state crime.