A bunch of terms are thrown around in this context in daily discussions online: police state, civil liberties, curtailing of freedoms; mostly stuff that comes from a militarization of a society. You take the DHS and its buying of 1.4 billion hollow point rounds of ammo[1]; the fact that the hated TSA is now creating a VIPR program for highways & road patrols[2]; FEMA programs for emergency[3] and so many others. What Ike Eisenhower spoke about (from a libertarian perspective he was arguably a good president, better than the people who followed), is that a growing militarization and the creation of wars to expend that military and its renewal, would inevitably increase the national debt. Now that there is no way to pay that debt down[4], there is going to be civil unrest. The hidden tax - inflation is going to make people poorer and eventually create social problems. This military will then be used for another purpose: civil discipline. The only way to change it is to default; who the hell's going to pay $222 Tn? Because of the dollar devaluation (again due to the debt), the Chinese are not buying. 61% of the T-bills were bought by the Fed last year[5]. Because of large number of baby boomers retiring, Social Security will become cash-flow negative by 2018 and bankrupt by 2033.[6] tl;dr I guess my point is that this permanent militarization was obvious and intentional.

[1]http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/why_does_homelan...

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Intermodal_Prevention_a...

[3]http://www.freedomfiles.org/war/fema.htm

[4]http://godfatherpolitics.com/6914/its-not-16-trillion-its-22...

[5]http://www.moneynews.com/Headline/fed-debt-Treasury/2012/03/...

[6]http://www.justfactsdaily.com/in-spite-of-public-claims-soci...

edit: typos and spacing edit edit: added a fact.