This is a discussion that comes up in one of my classes a lot.

This is what I think:
There is no definite balance between the two. Too much personal freedom would lead to chaos and a useless gov't. Too much law leads to repression.

However, governments are intended to provide for/protect their citizens. When the government starts putting its own survival before the needs of the population, it becomes useless.

Oftentimes, however, crises cause a huge increase in security for the government's self-preservation and its citizens safety. Like the Patriot Act, they usually threaten people's personal liberties. Some people celebrate the measures at first because of their fear, but in the end, these measures only make things worse because they damage the citizenry at large, not just "suspected terrorists".

Honestly, I think it's better to err on the side of personal liberty than security.

Individual freedom and Laws, while they seem to go hand in hand in the opposite direction, they do not.

Laws allow individuals to have their freedom and to not be interfered by other's who intrude their freedom.

In a sense, what I'm saying is, as long as you don't interfere with other's freedom, the law should not interfere with you.

If, the law constrains personal freedom; then it's closer to oppression rather than governing.

This is kind of a hard question to determine. In the preamble of the U.S. constitution it says: "We the people of the United States... insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense..." But then in the U.S. constitution's first amendment, it is written that the government may not take away the people's freedoms. However, there is also the social contract theory of John Locke, which states that in order for a group of people to form a society, they all must give up some of their rights for the good of the whole. In the end, I believe that the amount of freedom the government gives people, is determined by the people. If they are willing to allow their rights to be stripped away, then more and more of their rights will be stripped away. But if the people decry the loss of their rights, then the government will retreat, and their rights will be restored. Therefore, governments should go just as far as the people are willing to allow them, and no farther.

I would say that they answer correlates directly to how safe a society feels. The safer it feels, the more personal liberty it allows. It does not surprise me at all that Russia became much less free after Breslan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis

I think that if something like that happens here, this society will also become less free. The Patriot Act will seem like a breath of fresh air compared to what will happen.
In October 1962, my teacher explained the situation to us. She drew circles around Los Angeles and gave us the different kill ratios depending on how close to the center of the circle you lived. A l lot of the kids did not understand the consequences of what she was saying. But even at that age I was interested in current events, and further more I could see what would happen if the targeting of the Soviet missiles was off by a tiny degree.
At eleven years old, I thought that my chances of dying that day or the next were pretty good.
People born after that time have a hard time understanding the "Red Scare" but it was real.
My parents generation was willing to accept less civil liberties and more regimentation because that was what had helped them defeat Nazi Germany. My generation demanded more civil liberties because we expected, at some point, to die from nuclear war (accidental or otherwise) or in Viet Nam. So what did laws matter?
And this does not even take into account the fact that laws were being used at that time to control the liberties of people of color.

I do not see the the two as automatically in conflict. In fact, the rule of law helps to protect individual freedoms, by preventing the powerful from trampling on or ignoring the rights of others.

The Bill of Rights, after all, is effectively a list of laws that help to define freedoms and to prevent other, lesser laws from impeding them. Many other laws serve to elaborate and expand upon those basic principles - such as journalist shield laws, spousal/professional privilege, and civil rights laws. Others serve to balance the conflict between competing rights - such as the laws and policies behind OSHA, which weaken the business owners' rights to run their shops as they see fit, but protect the workers' rights to safe working conditions. Or the libel and slander laws, that weaken freedom of speech, but protect against malicious lies.

I believe that the proper purpose of government is to maximize individual freedom by providing laws to protect and resolve those freedoms. Without law, you have anarchy - which respects only the freedom to bully, terrorize, and kill.