Judge Andrew Napolitano, author and frequent news pundit, said in a recent interview on “The Glenn Beck Program” that America was spiraling very close to a “police state,” due in large part to the entrenched bureaucracy on Capitol Hill the last decade.
“The definition of a police state is when the government’s prime concern is for its own safety, not for the lives, liberty and property of the people it has sworn to protect,” Mr. Napolitano said, The Blaze reported. “That is a very, very dangerous place in which to be.”
The political atmosphere has been fueled under President Obama — as well as by the previous George W. Bush administration — Mr. Napolitano said, The Blaze reported.
“When … the bureaucracy remains the same no matter who the president is, no matter who the governor is, no matter who the mayor is, and when the attitude on the part of those unseen people in the government is, ’Our job is to keep ourselves in power,’ then we have lost control,” Mr. Napolitano said. “When the first rule of government is for government to look out for itself, is is no longer the servant. It is the master. Are we there [yet]? No. Can we see that in your lifetime and mine? Perhaps.”
Mr. Napolitano’s newest book is “Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Assault on Civil Liberties.”
He also said that one of the biggest dangers facing America was the oft-curious union of Republican and Democratic principles.
“They agree that our freedoms do not come from God or our humanity,” he said, The Blaze reported. “They also agree that we should be in a state of perpetual war because war is the health of the state. And [they believe in] perpetual debt, because we don’t want to pay our bills today when we can push them off until tomorrow.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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