A number of people have written me recently, particularly in response to several articles about the arrest of peaceful demonstrators at Bush campaign events, suggesting that America has become a police state.

This is an interesting proposition. It is undeniable that the First Amendment freedoms of assembly and speech are under assault by this administration and justice department.

* People in New York City during the Republican National Convention were arrested and held without charge and without access to an attorney for as long as several days in defiance even of a court order for their release.

* Over the course of the past four years, many protesters seeking to express their opposition to the Bush administration or its policies have been herded by police into remote, fenced-in compounds cynically called “free speech zones” by local police acting on the authority of the Secret Service and the White House, while those who have refused to be hidden away have been arrested, usually to be charged with “trespass” or “disorderly conduct.”

* Domestic spying has burgeoned, with undercover agents infiltrating legitimate non-violent groups, and police, including federal law enforcement officers, going to the homes of people planning peaceful protests to threaten them with arrest and jail.

* Travelers with progressive political backgrounds or connections have found themselves on a computer list operated by the Transportation Security Administration, which results in their being singled out at airport security checkpoints for extensive questioning and body searches which have sometimes resulted in missed flights, though it is clear that they pose no threat to airplane safety.

* And of course, we know the administration has been arresting and deporting immigrants without due process and has even imprisoned American citizens and held them without charge for years.

These and other outrages like the computer monitoring of internet use are certainly all hallmarks of a police state, but does this mean we are living in a police state?

My perspective on this may be colored by the fact that I spent nearly two years living in a genuine police state—the People’s Republic of China—and that in my younger days, I visited on several occasions another one, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). In both of those countries, people who make even the slightest protest against the government could—and in China still can be snatched up and taken away to be tossed into a prison gulag where there is no monitoring, no lawyer, and often no contact with friends and family. Many have been and, again in today’s China, continue to be killed for their beliefs and actions. Monitoring and spying in such states is pervasive. People in neighborhoods are paid to spy on and report on people to the police authorities, but often personal grudges can result in false claims that can ruin lives—and there is no recourse for challenging the abuses.

In such an environment, people understandably become afraid to even speak their minds among friends and family. Children learn very early that there are two worlds—one in the home and one outside the home—and that things that are said in the home are not to be communicated to anyone, even childhood playmates, outside the home.

This to me is what a police state is, and thankfully, as ugly as things have gotten of late in America, we are not there or even close to there yet.

What bothers me about the premature characterization of the U.S. as a police state is that it seems to play right into the hands of what the Bush administration and Republican Party leaders are trying to do, which is to create a climate of fear and intimidation, in which dissent and expressions of opinions outside the mainstream are considered mad, evil or even treasonous.

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