The United States often struggles to find a wartime balance between liberty and security, which in turn appears to affect Americans' trust in their government. The US finds itself at odds between its carefully crafted Wilsonian image of the eminent democratic nation state and its more restrictive wartime civil rights policies. The US remains ambivalent, caught between liberal and conservative impulses that produce a vicious cycle of civil rights abuse followed by apology and retribution. The US is again in the midst of this cycle. The attacks of September 11, 2001 and subsequent GWOT have given the US federal government renewed latitude with the civil rights of its citizens. The research question this study addresses is: to what degree does sacrificing the American value of liberty in the name of security affect the public's trust in the government and its resulting freedom of action in the name of national security?