Are We Becoming a Police State? Five Things That Have Civil Liberties Advocates Nervous

Link to article

In short - YES!

PBS - those crazy conspiracy nuts!

Read this article and then read Naomi Wolf's "Fascist America, in Ten Easy Steps." Note: the 10 steps are below with information from the PBS article in parentheses.

#1 - Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
#2 - Create a gulag (indefinite military detention)
#3 - Develop a thug caste (the police, military and other entities)
#4 - Set up an internal surveillance system (GPS and drones)
#5 - Harass citizens' groups
#6 - Engage in arbitrary detention and release
#7 - Target key individuals (assassinations of American citizens)
#8 - Control the press (arresting witnesses for recording police actions)
#9 - Dissent equals treason
#10 - Suspend the rule of law (indefinite military detention)

We could easily fill in the blanks with other points taken from our society.

The terrifying internal and external enemy is of course al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Qaddafi, Emmanuel Goldstein, etc...

Citizens' groups are constantly being harassed. Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 comes to mind with the California based peace group (I forget their name) who was infiltrated by the FBI.

Arbitrary detention and release is common place in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

And, of course, my favorite (#9)...

"USA! USA!"
"Support Our Troops!"
"If you're not with us, you're against us."
blah blah blah

A police state is a mandatory component of fascism.  We do not use the f word (FASCISM) enough to describe what we are experiencing in America today.