Our Dress Rehearsal for a Police State
All my life, I have dismissed paranoids on the right (“America is headed to communism”) and the left (“It can happen here”—referring to fascism).It’s not that I’ve ever believed liberty was guaranteed. Being familiar with the history and a pessimist regarding the human condition, I never believed that.
But the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.
People will argue that a temporary police state has been justified because of the allegedly unique threat to life posed by the new coronavirus. I do not believe the data will bear that out. Regardless, let us at least agree that we are closer to a police state than ever in American history.
