Average Americans are prisoners of their own patriotisim. Some believe that if you recite the words "I live in the land of the free, where we cherish liberty!" enough, it must in fact be true. It all comes down to selfish intent. Most don't give a crap about encroachments that don't effect them, but scream loud and far when theirs is at risk. It will be our downfall.
I once heard an excellent analogy to this. If you combined banning guns, abortion, drugs, porn, etc..., all with severe penalties into one Omnibus bill, it would smack of a draconian dictatorship. But ban each one bill at a time, they will pass, and you will arrive at the same spot, only this time you will have arrived under the flag of 'Freedom and Democracy Working'. Basically, if you engineer your argument (and thus your votes) into defenseless quantities, you can pass just about anything.
PS: Smokeing bans here were started under the guise of common sense laws. "All we want to do is ban smoking from coast to coast airline flights!" Now look where we are. I'm not a smoker, but the analogy works.