Gallup Poll: Half Of Americans Think Govt Is 'Immediate Threat' To Public Rights And Freedoms

About half the country thinks that the U.S. government is an "immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens," according to a new Gallup poll  released Monday.

While about 49 percent of respondents said the government is "an immediate threat", somewhat like the levels observed all through President Obama's tenure, another 49 percent said it is not.

"Too many laws/government too big in general" was given by about 19 percent of the respondents as the reason that the government posed a threat. "Violating freedoms and civil liberties" was a reason given by another 15 percent, while gun control and Second Amendment violations was the issue for 12 percent. The government's over-involvement in people's private lives was the reason for 10 percent.

In 2003, Gallup first asked the question, with just 30 percent of Americans saying the government was a threat, mainly because the Americans then looked at government in a better light after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Hence, the results seemed to be motivated by a reaction to the political party rather "a fixed fundamental or philosophical dislike of government". The Republicans and Democrats "flipped in their probability of holding these views when administrations changed in 2009" according to hngn.

Today while 65 percent of Republicans held the view that "the government is an immediate threat", just 32 percent of Democrats concurred with that view.

"Across the four surveys conducted during the Republican administration of George W. Bush, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were consistently more likely than Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to say the federal government posed an immediate threat," wrote Gallup's Frank Newport. "By contrast, across the four most recent surveys conducted during the Democratic Obama administration, the partisan gap flipped, with Republicans significantly more likely to agree."

Gallup conducted the survey on Sept. 9-13 selecting a random sample of 1,025 adults from all over the US, with an error margin of plus or minus 9 percentage points.

Earlier this month, about 71 percent of the Americans seemed to be unhappy with the direction in which the nation is headed, while just 2 percent trusted it all the time.