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There are really two facets, scenarios if you will, to this issue. The first is a slow progression of laws over time that strip people of their rights at an almost imperceptible pace. The boiling frog plan. The second is some catastrophic event or series of events. These two scenarios unfold in significantly different ways.
In the first. people will not react until it is far to late to effect change. Moreover, people coming from more restrictive cultures, will not only accept more restriction, but they will demand them. This will spring from a misguided failure of our society to assimilate rather than accommodate these people. While a number of small isolated attempts to resist have and will continue to occur, the participants will first be marginalized, demonized, and removed on demand of the majority as a threat to order and civilized society. You need look no farther than the many militia movements and their treatment from government to see this happening.
In the second scenario, some event occurs that requires government action that is in effect a declaration of Martial Law. We actually see this on occasion in incidents like Katrina, and September 11, 2001. So far as close as we have actually come to total Marshal Law was 9/11/2001. In that incident ALL aircraft were grounded nation wide. Armed guards showed up in places people had never seen them before, military aircraft filled the air in major city airspace, and people were encouraged to report ANY suspicious activities they saw. These reports were to be made against your coworkers, neighbors and friends.
Under a national declaration of Marshal Law the Constitution is suspended as the law of the land. Once this happens, any resistance will be met by massive and effective government action to put down resistance. Under these conditions, individuals and small groups will not stand a chance of effectively resisting. There will be resistance, that is certain. But it will be quickly put down.
In the aftermath of such an event, most of the reactionary people will be gone, leaving only those who are compliant to carry forward. The post Marshal Law society will be more restrictive of civil liberties, and meet less resistance from the populace, who will view the lifting of marshal law as a liberalization of individual liberties.
Of the two scenarios, the first is more likely than the second. But at some point when the first scenario has progressed far enough, the second scenario becomes more likely in the face of some trigger event.
As an aside, the discussion here concerning tobacco is part of the first scenario. Isolation, and demonization of ANY group, that is pursuing a legal activity, assists in the progression toward loss of individual liberties. Any time we apply a law, where civilized consensual behavior could produce the same result, we move farther from freedom, and closer to socialist/fascist restriction systems.
But I fear I will be long gone before either of these scenarios plays out, as I will have been identified, demonized and eliminated long before the final series of events. So for me, your original question, while interesting academically, will not really have much practical application.
Regards
