...here, from the always "lefter than thou" Mickey Z:
"President (sic) George W. Bush and company have scared half the voters to death with stories about terrorists...so they'll vote for him.
"Senator John F. Kerry (JFK2) and his surrogates on the soft left have scared the other half to death with stories about creeping fascism...so they'll vote for him.
"Of course, anyone with an iota of objectivity left realizes the terror threat is laughably exaggerated...and there's infinitely more danger in operating a motor vehicle than all the 'evildoers' in the world combined.
"But what should we make of the claims of the Democrats (and the disturbing number of lefties who support them)? What about all the yarns spun about liberties lost...solely due, we hear, to one inarticulate puppet from Texas?
"Whether we want to accept it or not; we've heard it all before. The fascists are perpetually at the gate, it seems. But, I submit: Are Bush's efforts truly more frightening than, say, Woodrow Wilson's repressive behavior during World War I?
"'Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty,' Wilson warned...and he had the newly minted Espionage and Sedition Act to back him up.
"Passed in June 1917, it cast a wide net and trampled civil liberties. In Vermont, for example, a minister was sentenced to 15 years in prison for writing a pamphlet, distributed to five persons, in which he claimed that supporting the war was wrong for a Christian. Here's a sample of that law:
"'Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment of not more than 20 years, or both.'
"'The Espionage Act had very little to do with espionage,' says Howard Zinn.
"'Instead it made it a crime, punishable by up to twenty years in prison, to say or print anything that would "willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States." The Sedition Act, which was an amendment to the Espionage Act, made it even a little more drastic. In fact, two thousand people were prosecuted under those acts and about a thousand went to prison.'
"(For those keeping score at home, the Espionage and Sedition Act is still on the books.)
"All this 'fascism' was in addition to the Palmer Raids and the deportation of Emma Goldman for saying and writing things often less radical than those that appear on this website."
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