Freedom - a long rant about the basics

Our freedoms and ideals, that we used to take for granted, if not gone, are eroding rapidly.

Innocent people now have to fear having their houses broken into, not by common criminals but by those thought to protect us, the police. Police who use overwhelming force, wear masks, have no name tags or badges. This is not happening everywhere but it is happening, to innocent people, to mayors of cities. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012302935_pf.html
The police cover it up or arrest people on bogus charges. Mostly this seems to happen due to the "War on Drugs", a futile prohibition which has cost lives, families and futures.
Now that we know that we were/are being spied upon by our government should we worry that this won't be the only reason? Of course they're not all storm troopers - http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/01/22/metro.hero/

We find that our leaders failing on such personal levels as paying taxes, which the average citizen doesn't get away with. Our large corporate heads demand outrageous salaries and bonuses with no responsibility for these sums, their only allegiance is to themselves and maybe their shareholders. These people are supposed to be leaders as well and they have failed miserably, just like the majority of our politicians.

We used to at least think that some of our national leaders could be trusted to have the people's best interest at heart and mind but mostly they have quietly, and not so quietly removed or devalued most of our ideals over the last few decades, with the convoluted legislation and regulations they have enacted. And with party rules that help keep out only the "approved candidates".
I wonder how many of the politicians even know all the ins and outs of the laws they have voted on. I wonder how many have even read the entire bills. Many of the bills are hundreds of pages long or are so vague in their language that there is never agreement exactly what they say. Or they leave the actual rule making up to departments, like the IRS, Treasury (bank/wall street bailout), and we see how good that's worked out.

So my questions are:
Has it always been this way and are we only now becoming more informed (not by the MSM of course), or at least more aware? Or as I believe we have been sinking into the cesspool bit by bit until the overwhelming stench has awoken more and more of us.

What can we do about this as a nation of , for all intents and purposes, 2 political parties, one of which has gone batshit crazy. I mean we all expect politicians to lie to us, just not so blatantly and with so little understanding that there is public proof of their lies. Of course we actively campaign for Democrats but is that enough? And are they enough?