As science, medicine, and technology continue to progress, the capabilities and reach of the State will continue to expand, as well. In Justice Scalia's worldview, we should be good little sheep, docilely accept this state of affairs, and accommodate the whims and desires of our caretakers in deciding how to live our lives. A recent series of television commercials for a credit card company shows engineers blowing up skyscrapers and, in another commercial, firemen calling in helicopters, fire trucks, and scores of workers to rescue a cat in a tree. As the narrator says, simply because you have the power does not mean you should use it. But wisdom and self-restraint are hardly the typical hallmarks of the State.
Governments extend into every nook and cranny they can unless actively opposed and restrained.
The agents of the State want to refashion our existences to comport with their capacities for surveillance and control. Conformity on our part makes their jobs so much easier. Given the patchwork of laws and court rulings, our hopes for relief from oppression are raised one moment and dashed the next. A person's home long ago ceased to be his castle. Eminent domain, asset forfeiture, and no-knock raids merely presaged the more egregious violations of our privacy rampant today.