The term “police state” makes most people think of Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany, however, is just one example of a police state. The phrase “police state” is the literal translation from the German word “Polizeistaat,” the form of government in Prussian under Frederick William (1620-88). In this context, “police” means “to oversee.” It was not until the rise of Hitler that the term entered common usage in English and gained the evil connotations associated with it.

In reality, police states can range from the authoritarian (17th century Prussia) to the genocidal (Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China). In any event, in a police state, the citizen serves the state, “the greater good.” Thus, people are stripped of their liberty and rights as individuals. This attitude is not compatible with the American ideal that governments are formed to protect the liberty and rights of individuals:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed. [The Declaration of Independence]

Elitists impose a police state in an attempt to produce a social ideal.* In a police state, the government must control everyone and everything. However, as the government fails to produce this utopia, the methods that the government use to control its population become more and more ruthless and totalitarian.

*In Russia, China, and Cambodia, this social ideal was the “classless society.” In Germany, it was Lebensraum (living space) and the creation of the perfect Aryan Reich.