Are our competitors - for example, China, which is a deeply authoritarian nation - becoming more authoritarian or more liberal over time?

I wonder if it's conservative or liberal [ inalienable rights idea], because when we think of liberal thought, when we think about the relation to liberty, we're talking about traditional conservatism - as opposed to today's conservatism, which no longer represents those views.

I know the media likes to personalize political debates, and I know the government will demonize me.

It's much more important for U.S. to be able to defend against foreign attacks than it is to be able to launch successful attacks against foreign adversaries.

The question that we, as a society, have to ask is, are our collective rights worth a small relative advantage in our ability to spy on other countries and foreign citizens? I have my opinion about that, but we all collectively have to come to our opinion about it.

Do we want to emulate China in the way that China emulates the West? I think, for most Americans, the answer to that question would be no.

The reality is if we sit back and allow a few officials behind closed doors to launch offensive attacks without any oversight against foreign nations, against people we don't like, against political groups, radicals, and extremists whose ideas we may not agree with, and could be repulsive or even violent - if we let that happen without public buy-in, we won't have any seat at the table of government to decide whether or not it's appropriate for these officials to drag us into some kind of war activity that we don't want, but we weren't aware of at the time.