The Trade-Offs Between Liberty and Security

As I was reading this piece I was trying to remember where I'd heard or read about a Department of Homeland Security before and it came to me. They combined the functions carried out by our CIA, FBI, and Secret Service... they called it the Committee for State Security or KGB in Russian.
I recalled when Ed Meese, President Reagan's Attorney General, returned from a visit to the Soviet Union that he had expressed a level of... envy?... at the depth and scope of their organization. Imagine my surprise at discovery of these remarks prepared by Ed Meese for the Heritage Foundation and published in October, 2001.
"First, policymakers must distinguish between constitutional liberties on the one hand, and mere privileges and conveniences on the other. Second, they must understand that liberty depends on security and that freedom in the long run depends on eliminating the threat of terrorism as soon as possible." He goes on to express that the threat of terrorism calls for warrantless searches, and denial of the right of the accused to confront witnesses against him.
Did anybody else see this piece on a Massachusetts woman carrying $47,000 in cash boarding a flight to Texas for plastic surgery (she says). A DEA agent told her she had a nice body and didn't need plastic surgery; and then pocketed the cash on the suspicion that it was drug money.
The thing that I don't understand is why some people say that I'm liberal when they are the ones who are circumventing the Constitution.
Ed Meese wrote: "While American troops may be asked to pay for liberty in blood, most Americans will be asked merely to give up a few privileges and conveniences. Surely, this is a sacrifice they can afford to make."
Ed, our brothers bled so that Americans wouldn't have to make that sacrifice. We swore an oath to defend the Constitution, not to get around it. You and Admiral Poindexter and Oliver North keep forgetting that.