The Espionage Act Rears its Ugly Head
Back in 1917, when America was troubled by socialists and anarchists and other folks who thought that unrestrained capitalism was a bad idea, the Woodrow Wilson administration decided that going to war in Europe to protect American commerce was a good idea. The socialists and anarchists and others of their ilk thought that going to war, and drafting American boys to fight it, was a really bad idea. So they did what they thought the First Amendment guaranteed them the right to do -- they argued against the war.
For their trouble, the socialists and anarchists and others prompted the Wilsonites and the Congress to pass a law called the Espionage Act that, essentially, made it illegal to engage in any kind of speech that succeeded in stirring up public opposition to that war. Several thousands folks went to jail simply for arguing against war and against American policy, and the Supreme Court found the Espionage Act constitutional because such speech created "clear and present danger of bringing about a substantive evil that Congress has a right to prevent."
Those were the early years of First Amendment jurisprudence, and your civics class probably taught you that the rights of free expression had, thankfully, been expanded since then.
But, it turns out, the Espionage Act is back and could soon be trotted out in a major campaign by the Bushies to silence independent journalism. As Adam Liptak reports in Sunday's New York Times: The "Bush administration is putting pressure on the press as never before, and it is operating in a judicial climate that seems increasingly receptive to constraints on journalists."
No matter that the reporting by the Times and the Washington Post has unveiled the unsavory side of America's tactics in the War on Terror: This is war. It just strikes me that Gore Vidal's story in the film Bob Roberts in 1992 is becoming truer each day: We're the frogs who've been put into a pot to boil, but because the cook increases the temperature only slowly we never realize we're being boiled until it's too late.
For their trouble, the socialists and anarchists and others prompted the Wilsonites and the Congress to pass a law called the Espionage Act that, essentially, made it illegal to engage in any kind of speech that succeeded in stirring up public opposition to that war. Several thousands folks went to jail simply for arguing against war and against American policy, and the Supreme Court found the Espionage Act constitutional because such speech created "clear and present danger of bringing about a substantive evil that Congress has a right to prevent."
Those were the early years of First Amendment jurisprudence, and your civics class probably taught you that the rights of free expression had, thankfully, been expanded since then.
But, it turns out, the Espionage Act is back and could soon be trotted out in a major campaign by the Bushies to silence independent journalism. As Adam Liptak reports in Sunday's New York Times: The "Bush administration is putting pressure on the press as never before, and it is operating in a judicial climate that seems increasingly receptive to constraints on journalists."
No matter that the reporting by the Times and the Washington Post has unveiled the unsavory side of America's tactics in the War on Terror: This is war. It just strikes me that Gore Vidal's story in the film Bob Roberts in 1992 is becoming truer each day: We're the frogs who've been put into a pot to boil, but because the cook increases the temperature only slowly we never realize we're being boiled until it's too late.
posted by Brian Steffen | 9:11 PM
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