Didn't somebody in ancient Greece say something about how democracy inevitably leads to tyranny? It happens like this. The more democratic a country becomes the more what we might call intervening communities - that is groups with some independent power existing between the citizen and the state - are eliminated. This tends to make the power of the state increasingly absolute. People think that this does not matter because, after all, the government is elected by the people, of the people, for the people. Of course it is not quite like that since the government increasingly consists not of ordinary citizens with a sense of civic duty but rather of career politicians who have done nothing other than be politicians since they left university, and, indeed, since the time when they still were at university. The intervening communities generally had some function of looking after their members. As they disappear, the only protection available is the state itself. As things continue to move in this direction, the role of the state comes to be seen more and more in terms of protecting the citizen. The traditional state responded when there were misfortunes, but the new state is expected to prevent them from happening. The only way to do this is widespread surveillance. All the apparatus of the police state thus gradually comes into being. This is not experienced as a threat by the citizenry because they think it is there to protect them. Then some kind of external threat occurs. Now the police state apparatus can be stepped up several notches. We can have detention without trial, confiscation without redress, interrogation without charge or due process, torture even. It's all for the protection of the citizenry and Mr and Mrs Average believe that they will themselves never be the victim of such procedures. After all the state is there to protect them. They do not consider the possibility that it may be the state that they will need protection from (which, ironically, was the possibility that gave the initial impetus to the development of democracy in the first place - how things come full circle).
In the UK and America this is about where we have got to so far. If it goes much further I will no longer be allowed to write articles like this. Journalists will soon be unable to publish criticisms of the government without considerable risk. Those who enjoy being at the centre of these increasingly draconian structures do, of course, have a vested interest in exaggerating the risk level. Doing so can lead not just to a police state at home but also to wars abroad - we have seen several such in the past decade. Does anybody now really believe that Saddam Hussain's Iraq was ever a serious threat to the UK or America? Did the "Axis of Evil" ever exist? No, it was a propaganda stunt to get popular acquiescence to a campaign of mass murder and pillage of another country's resources. Unfortunately we are mostly blind to what is happening. Most people still believe that what happened in Russia under Stalin could never happen here. Seeing an American dissident fleeing to Russia really turns thing up-side-down, doesn't it? It must be a mistake, surely. Things don't change do they? However, the extent of surveillance in Britain now is probably greater than it ever was of citizens in Soviet Russia and the steadily increasing use of unaccountable coercive power should be alarming. Soon it may be too late.