Do we live in a police state?

[limpyhobbler]

2. Sometimes it looks like one.

Usually when people try to assemble and organize to question authority in a serious way, the police state aspect shows its uglier side.

Police state is probably like a scale. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a police state is this? I think we are pretty free. But there are many troubling aspects of authoritarian control in place and the trend looks pretty bad I think. Prisons for profit, stop-and-frisk policies, violent crackdowns against political protests and encampments, misuse of grand juries to intimidate dissidents, failure to hold law enforcement accountable for abuses, government monitoring all communications... these are all serious business. We really don't know if our rights on paper are worth anything until we try to exercise them and see what the reaction is. Protest has a value all by itself because it asserts the right to protest.