Many thinkers and intellectuals have come out stating something similar to this. A lot of them have been dismissed for obvious reasons, as people are still elected and Presidents can be impeached. But when you see how much of the criteria the United States fills it begins to make sense.

I understand this is controversial, but it's something I'm interested to hear other opinions from.

A police state unquestionably exists when:

1. Criminal Federal powers:

[*]Illegally arrest, imprison, and torture American citizens

[*]Assassinate American citizens abroad merely suspected of terrorism

[*]Spy on US citizens with drones

[*]Constitute inverted totalitarianism

[*]Spy on and intimidate citizens

[*]Loot taxpayer money for fat-cats

[*]Make domestic spying on US citizens legal

[*]Occupy an American town

http://www.hermes-press.com/police_state.htm

America is nowhere neat the point of becoming a Police State. Just as well, a police state (in the minds of the citizens) goes against what America has stood for for centuries. They wouldn't accept it. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if riots and protests break out if America crept any closer to those conditions for a Police State.

That's an incredibly biased source that you're using there, one that definitely twists the facts and only presents a shaded side of an argument for the sake of sensationalism.

After reading that site, I think I agree with at statement as well. "Spying" on people does not make your government a police state, not spying on people makes your government incompetent and unfit. I haven't seen any of the people that say "America shall pay" or "America shall burn" and wave signs out from of my town's business center "disappear". If you consider what the American government does to guarantee it's own safety to be nature of a "Police State", than many other nations are also Police States of a much more violent nature. I think this entire thread isn't seeing the forest for the trees, personally. Those "criteria" America lapses in several parts, the government hardly illegally arrests people, neither are there "criminal" federal powers, another false is that the US government will execute people; this isn't the Cold War, governments don't go around snipping loose ends anymore; and "inverted totalitarianism" ... you do realize that, for a government to function, it needs to enforce its weight as a government. I think that, if anyone wants to prove this, there will need to be much better evidence. None of which I would honestly believe.

"It's only wrong if America does it" is what it is starting to look like, and the world is quickly becoming set with these double standards.

When I think police state, I think more along the lines of the Soviet system. Police would redirect a trainload of passengers onto a different train, and send them off to the Archipelago. There, each passenger would work for 10 years, and all so the police department could fulfill quota. And those ten years would be even longer if you actually had commited some minor offense.

They'd bust your door down at night because they had a science of arresting people, and the science said it was easier to get rid of someone in the dead of night. They'd arrest you for going to the police station to report the crying 4-year old that's been starving and unattended because her parents were arrested 3 days ago.

I actually couldn't read more than 50 or 60 pages of The Gulag Archipelago (ebook) because of how sickening a true police state is (the only other author besides Solzhenitsyn that could churn my stomach too much to read was the Marquis de Sade). On average, American policies sound rude and annoying, but not disgusting. Abuse is the exception, and you're able to criticize abuses of power by the executive branch without automatically getting into trouble. Calling America a police state is an exaggeration that unfortunately makes us forget just how bad a state can become.