The traditional definition of a Police State, I suppose would be along the lines that "It is a Police State if the people in power are holding down an unwilling population, as a way of holding on to that power, and they use a police force as their tools to do it, giving the people in it unlimited licence to do whatever they think is necessary towards that end.

Well, that's not the situation in America, as I understand it. Because it seems pretty clear that most people do back up the actions of the police. And the same goes for other Western countries.

But that's not the end of the argument - because in fact you could have said the same in Nazi Germany.And that isn't to equate the two- the reason I bring in the German case is because that is the most extreme example of a repressive regime which had popular support .

So it isn't good enough to say that "people want it, so it's just democracy". And in fact the people who drew up the American Constitution were very careful to ensure that just because a majority of people wanted something, that didn't mean that they could have it, if it involved trampling on other people. (At least, that was how it was supposed to work.)

So that definition in the first paragraph should be amended to take into account that "the people in power" may in a sense be a majority of the people in a country.

And it becomes: "It is a Police State if the people who represent the majority of the population are holding down a minority in that population, as a way of ensuring the continued approval of the majority, and they use a police force as their tools do do it, giving the people in it unlimited licence to do whatever they think is necessary towards that end."

Whether the USA fits that definition is something only Americans can determine. So far as the country I'm living in is concerned, there are ominous signs of movement in that direction, with a government preoccupied in appeasing tabloid hysteria and looking for simplistic "tough" solutions to all kinds of problems - problems that have been thrown up a whirlwind of change in how we live, and how we look after each other, and how we put limits on our own behaviour and those of other people.