General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Now will people believe me when I say we live in a de facto police state? [View all]NewDeal_Dem
(1,049 posts)po·lice state
noun: police state; plural noun: police states
a totalitarian state controlled by a political police force that secretly supervises the citizens' activities.
since the middle of the 20th Century, the term has "taken on the emotional and derogatory meaning of a government that exercises power arbitrarily through the police."[1]
The inhabitants of a police state experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force which operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state.[2] Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, contrasted the Rechtsstaat ("legal" or "constitutional" state) with the aristocratic Polizeistaat ("police state" .[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_state
An autocracy is a system of government in which a supreme power is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of coup d'état or mass insurrection).[1]
Both totalitarianism and military dictatorship are often identified with, but need not be, an autocracy. Totalitarianism is a system where the state strives to control every aspect of life and civil society. It can be headed by a supreme dictator, making it autocratic, but it can also have a collective leadership such as a commune or political party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocracy