Reply to post: Nope.

Nope.

"Isn't that the normal procedure for all left leaning administrations with greater surveillance and oppression the further to the left they are?"

Nope, it's pretty much US-specific to have two main political parties (and basically no functional 3rd parties) that both effectively act as 1 party. Both parties (per their voting history, not rhetoric) hate freedom and want a huge, intrusive, expensive government; but ask members of either party and the lost rights and huge, intrusive, expensive gov't are all "the other party's" fault.

"Arctic fox, they're probably American. I get the impression there's a different perception of where the centre is there."

Yup. The link you linked to sums it up pretty well. You've got two political parties that, well Republicans INSIST the Democrats are all these crazy nut-job left wing hippies, and Democrats INSIST the Republicans are all these right-wing big-wig plutocrats. They, in reality, have EXACTLY the same political views and just split hairs over the most minute details. BOTH insist it's the OTHER PARTIES fault there's so much government spending, will come up with a list of programs to cut, but then have an equally big list of programs they want to ad. Both claim they want freedom and rights, but both* voted for all the things like DMCA, Patriot Act, etc. and seem to race each other to take away rights (while, of course, blaming it all on the other party.)

*Ron Paul's run as a Republican, and in Congress actually spoke out against all this AND voted against it. But he's not really a Republican, he's a libertarian, he just runs as a Republican due to the US's broken "2 party" (effectively 1 party) system.