I didn't mean to imply we are there already, just that the intellectual groundwork is laid out there if anyone will want to enforce some "muscular liberalism" on a more and more unwilling populace (native and immigrant descented) or troublesome dissident intellectuals in a few decades. I think the potential pretty clearly exists and isn't at all negligible a threat, considering the growing reach of the state in the past decade or two that has been happening in the name of fighting terrorism, ensuring social justice and other anarchy-tyrannical silliness .