are we living in a police state?

Question

If i compare now with the 70s and 80s it seems like everything is controlled now just going out now you have a high probability of being arrested unless your just a good little boy.

Answer 1

Yes we are..examples...of such are as follows:
Checkpoints
Pedestrian stops
Jail custody for minor offenses that used to be cite and releases.
Lethal use not monitored or excused.

But I think the jailing issue is to get as many people in custody so they have an excuse for budget increases and to show that they have more arrests to justify such increases.

Our soldiers cannot shoot until they are shot at..yet the police can kill if they "feel" threatened.

The checkpoints which were once hailed at finding drunk drivers have now included checking for warrants and other violations that would not normally have been detected using conventional means.

Answer 2

Excellent response form The_Doc_. We are not living in a police state. Those of you who believe so are of questionable character. The average John or Jane Doe has no reason or presumed thoughts of a police state simply because they're not thinking of engaging in criminal activity. There are exceptions of course. In some communities, police contact is much more frequent but that's due to several factors none of which should be referred to as a police state. Stop acting up and you'll have no reason to assume a police state exists.

Answer 3

Okay, what do you mean being a good little boy? Obeying the law? If we had a police state, you wouldn't be able to post what you just did, now would you?

I think you should go visit a police state, say China or Cuba and see what it is really like in one.

Answer 4

Whether you want to believe it or not
* Our nation is currently in a war
* The enemy has agents among us plotting future attacks
* Federal authorities have been granted unprecedented powers through the Patriot Act and other laws, to seek out suspects in this war, and take extreme measures with those suspects.

Let's suppose intelligence chatter indicates that there is an imminent attack planned in your city, in which a nuclear device will be used to kill millions of people in that city, and the radiation downwind will effectively force America to evacuate 2-3 states for 50 years.

At this point the feds have 100 suspects in custody,
1 of them is one of the enemy, but they have no idea which 1. The other 99 are totally innocent.

Assuming for the sake of arguement that you are one of the 99, do you agree that it is Ok to torture all 100 to try to get info to save the millions from the imminent nuclear attack?

This is the kind of moral dilemma facing our nation's leaders every day, as they get intelligence info indicating some attack may be threatened one place or some place else, except the odds of finding a relevant suspect are not 1 in 100, more like 1 in 10,000.

Answer 5

God, what a STUPID question.

You want a crazy state? Try being a woman who gets raped by seven guys - then YOU get flogged for enticing the men. (Saudi Arabia)

Try being the father of a girl 12 years old and one of the sons of Saddam takes a liking to her. And if you protest, you flat out disappear! (Iraq before Operation Iraqi Freedom)

Try living in a place where, because you are born with a deformity, you can be taken to a work camp and eventually burned to death. Or taken to a laboratory and vivesected. (Any part of Nazi Germany.)

Try living in a place where if you dare to write ANYTHING critical of the government, you get sent to a gulag where you have to endure weather bad enough to threaten your life. And that was the LENIENT sentence. Further, if your entire village gets a bit uppity, it gets burned to the ground. (USSR before the great Berlin Wall fell. Stalin was noted for his "purges.")

You don't know BEANS about "police state." Here, if you don't do anything wrong, you rarely get arrested. But if you were doing something questionable, you might WELL get arrested. Your idea of "not doing anything wrong" just might not match up with other ideas and that is your problem. You are just too thick-headed to see the truth of the world around you. Sorry if that's a little harsh, but it is a reality that the world has changed around us since the 1970s and 1980s. Live with it.

Answer 6

If you think you are living in a police state now. Try living outside the United States in an authoritarian regime country.

Answer 7

I think one should really know what a police state is before they go making such a bold and ridiculous statement.

Arrested for not being a good little boy? Aren't we supposed to protect good little boys from bad little boys?

Give an example of these erroneous arrests please.

Answer 8

So let me get this straight, you're complaining that if you go out and commit even little crimes the Police will catch you, but people who don't commit any crimes are not arrested by the Police, WELL, DUH!!!!
The apparently hidden message (at least for you) here is DON'T BREAK the LAW, BECAUSE the POLICE are BETTER THEN EVER at CATCHING the BAD GUYS!!!

Answer 9

No.... but perhaps you should try to follow the law to reduce your chance of getting arrested for not being a "good little boy"

Answer 10

every time some one thinks of something stupid to do to either harm themself or others they make a knew law so all this police action you keep talking about is the result of all the stupid things people have done in the past