Dennis Prager writes for the Daily Signal that government’s response to COVID-19 offers a “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 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. …
… But we are presently living with all four of the key hallmarks of a police state:
No. 1: Draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.
The federal, state, county, and city governments are now restricting almost every freedom except those of travel and speech.
Americans have been banned from going to work (and thereby earning a living), meeting in groups (both indoors and outdoors), meeting in their cars in church parking lots to pray, and entering state-owned properties such as beaches and parks—among many other prohibitions.
No. 2: A mass media supportive of the state’s messaging and deprivation of rights. …
… No. 3: Use of police.
Police departments throughout America have agreed to enforce these laws and edicts with what can only be described as frightening alacrity. …
… No. 4: Snitches.
How do the police dispatchers learn of lawbreakers such as families playing softball in a public park, lone joggers without face masks, etc.? From their fellow citizens snitching on them.
Follow Carolina Journal Online’s continuing coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic here.
