Police State U.S.A. (BOOK REVIEW)
Police State U.S.A.
How Orwell’s Nightmare Is Becoming Our Reality
by Cheryl K. Chumley
WND Books
Hardcover, $26.95
288 pages
ISBN: 978-1-936488-14-8
Book
Review by Kam Williams
“People
have liberty; people take their liberty for granted; people become apathetic;
people lose their liberty. We are on that track, but detouring back to the
freedom road is still possible…
The
data in this book concerns me and should concern you… The coming signs of
tyranny are all around us. Fortunately, they can be stopped before it is too
late, but not without a courageous effort… We can still save liberty for our
children if, and only if, America
awakens.”
--
Excerpted from the Foreword (pages xi-xii)
Anybody tuning in to
the media coverage of the daily protests of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri
can’t help but notice the intimidating police presence that makes the city look
more like a battlefield than a suburban enclave. The frightening militarization
has featured everything from armored Humvees and tanks rolling down the streets,
to helmeted officers flanked shoulder-to-shoulder behind body-length armored
shields, to snipers in camouflage fatigues training their M16 rifles on marchers
through night-vision scopes, to the use of teargas, rubber bullets, smoke bombs
and flash grenades to disperse demonstrators.
What are we to make
of such a disturbing show of force on the part of local, state and federal
authorities? To Cheryl K. Chumley it is merely further evidence of a burgeoning
abuse of power on the part of a government already hell bent on trampling its
citizens’ Constitutional rights.
In her book, Police State U.S.A.: How Orwell’s Nightmare Is Becoming Our
Reality, the veteran journalist indicts present-day America as a “total surveillance
society.” She argues that tyrannical rule has come as a consequence of the Patriot
Act’s creation of secret data collection centers and the employment of the IRS,
NSA phone taps, drones, tracking devices, warrantless searches, traffic light
cameras and the like to nefarious ends.
For
example, the author cites the case of Scottsdale, Arizona, whose city council
approved the purchase of a building to house its police investigative unit,
“but refused to disclose the facility’s location” in order to “protect the
lives” of detectives working undercover. She says it’s certifiably scary, when
the nation has arrived at a point where taxpayers are no longer privy to such previously
public information.
In a timely chapter devoted to “The Rise of
Militarized Police,” Ms. Chumley states that the technology cops now have at
their disposal “is the stuff of science fiction,” like guns that fire darts embedded
with a GPS. Though such draconian measures should supposedly be of no concern
to the law-abiding, it’s still of little comfort when you think of the
seemingly neverending state of siege for folks in Ferguson trying to exercise their First
Amendment rights.
Food for
thought for anyone who fervently believes our inalienable right to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness comes from God, not the government.
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