Are We Loosing The Freedoms Our Ancestors Won?

Let me ask you a question. Do you think we in the West are more or less free now than we were in the past? With the rise and rise of big governments and sometimes even bigger corporations are the big loosers the individual Australians, English, Americans? I guess that over the last few years some disturbing changes have occured to the liberal democratic societies of the west. I aim to look into this over the next little while to discover weather as we strike a blow for democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan (Not withstanding the failure to achieve the desired result espcially in Iraq) have we at the same time lost some of our own freedom?
Were we ever really polically free?
In my own country there are only two meaninnful polical parties, while the retoric is load from the Left and Right in the media on issues close to thier hearts, governments have grown ever larger, jails have become ever more numerous and crowded and the people are spending more and more of thier daily lives being electronically monitored. Some countries are now requiring those who enter to be fingerprinted. Is that not a violation of some sort?
The rights of media organisations are now being manipulated or hampered by litigation, the free press which for so long has been a defender of free speech is being more and more hampered by laws restraining where and when they can comment.
As Rome fell from its high calling as a republic and become a great teranical machine can or will this happen to the domocracies of the west?
Alot of small things have been happening, I guess I am asking the questions
Liberty, fraternity, egality? Or Chains, Solitude, Caste and Class?
The time is now to stop the abuse of the law, the wielding of unchecked power and to prevent us falling into the trap of complacency and allowing the freedom our ancestors won to be ripped away in the name of safety.
Anyway maybe im overconcerned, I dont want to be a labeled with those who hate the West and spew out venom and vitriol in thier rush to opposed capitalism and all it stands for. Im actually quite happy with the way things are working out since the globalising nineties. I worked for a while in a union run government utility job, it was a soul destroying experience because of the lack of any motivation to be a success, to be more.
I do however think that thier is more than economics, the traditional Left and Right see things through the lens of Karl Marx and Adam Smith, but today that battle is over and we need to look deeper at the causes of totalitarianism and how to prevent it from coming to us who have been so fortunate to avoid the devastation of governments with too much power. Combined with a citicenry with not enough.