Cheryl Chumley Explains America’s “Police State,” Offers Solution

A confluence of abridged liberties will transform the United States into a nation “…where the government is basically policing every individual American’s actions,” Cheryl Chumley asserted at Accuracy in Academia’s Author’s Night event.

While discussing her books, “Police State USA” and “The Devil in DC,” Chumley stated that “government intrusions, government infringements,” and “Constitutional hits and dings” pervade American society.

Massive government spying on private communications contributes to the development of America’s “police state.” Noting that, “You can’t go on Facebook right now without wondering who’s watching…” Chumley pointed out, “There have been cases where people have been jailed for what they’ve been posting on Facebook.”

She traces this problem back to “…September 11^th and the government swooping in to use the justification of terrorism and fighting terrorism threats to basically trod on Constitutional rights.”

In addition to becoming increasingly “militarized,” the police often have access to government-collected data. They also accumulate their own data on citizens without any probable cause. Chumley avers that “Police are going more from reacting to crimes to predicting behaviors and predicting areas of their community where crimes might occur…that’s a little bit Orwellian I guess and…it requires a lot of data collection.”

“Civil asset forfeiture laws” deny citizens the due process of law by permitting the police to take a driver’s “…car, cash, assets, whatever they have, if they’re suspected of using that car during the commission of a drug related crime.” Police can also confiscate other types of personal property and Chumley explained that “…they don’t have to wait until a case goes through court and the person is found guilty before they take those assets, sell them, and then keep the money — and then you’re left in the position of having a fight in court to prove that you were innocent.”

Even non-governmental factors in the United States contribute to liberty’s demise. Contrasting the rugged individualism once valued by Americans with the oppressive bureaucracy of home owner’s associations, Chumley drew a dichotomy between the nation’s history as, “…a country that forged the west…” and modern America, a nation where some property owners need to ask “a local homeowner’s association board: ‘Hey, can I put this flower pot on my front porch?’”

She also noted the degradation of America’s armed forces, observing, “Our military is supposed to be a fighting force, a defense force, and now they’re just kind of green machines going out there and testing out solar panels on a battlefield.”

In her second book, “The Devil in DC” Chumley describes how Christians and “patriotic Americans” can remedy the plethora of problems discussed in “Police State USA.”

She links the government’s exponential expansion to national secularization, asserting that “…the more government is allowed to grow, the less room there is for God.”

“This nation was founded first and foremost on the idea that our rights come from God, not government … We actually need to fight to put God back in charge of our government.”

Chumley later explained, “…I’m not saying that I want my elected officials holding prayer vigils for everybody. I’m just saying that when you have a nation where people are constrained by belief in a higher power where they think they’re accountable to something higher than themselves, like founding fathers believed, even though they didn’t all believe in the same…Christian religion, they all believed in a higher power and higher accountability. When you have that then you have a government that is accountable to the people too.”

Alex Nitzberg is an intern at the American Journalism Center at Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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