Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, wrote a column this week praising Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor whose revelations have cast new light on the extent of the government's electronic surveillance.

"Obviously," Ellsberg writes, "the United States is not now a police state." A few paragraphs further on, he says, "the so-called intelligence community has become the United Stasi of America."

I'd be more inclined to laugh at Ellsberg's confusion if I didn't recognize a little of it in myself — a fact that startles me, by the way. I'm a U.K. citizen hoping soon to become a U.S. citizen, a lifelong admirer of the American project and its founding principles. But after living here for eight years, I've started to wince when I hear the expression, "It's a free country."