Critique

Abstract

Throughout U.S. history, law enforcement agencies and other departments in federal, state and local governments have overreacted to perceived threats to American security in times of war or "quasi-war" and have violated civil liberties. At the very beginning of the Republic, when the new American nation was in danger of becoming embroiled in the wars between France and England, our Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Under those Acts, Congressmen and journalists were arrested, convicted and imprisoned simply for criticizing the government. In the Civil War, as is well known, President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and in many cases military tribunals were used inappropriately and illegally. In World War I, Congress once again passed many laws, ostensibly in support of the war effort, that violated basic human rights, such as freedom of speech and association. For example, Eugene Victor Debs, a socialist who had received millions of votes as a Presidential candidate, was convicted and imprisoned because he spoke out, with others, in opposition to the draft. After World War I, when there was significant concern about Bolshevism after the Russian Revolution, the government engaged in the so-called "Palmer raids," a series of raids on, and arrests of, suspected radicals, many of whom were immigrants. Indeed, the A.C.L.U. was first founded to challenge those arrests. World War II saw one of the greatest stains on American democracy and certainly one of the greatest overreactions, the internment of Japanese Americans in response to claimed national security threats stemming from our war with Japan. U.S. citizens of Japanese origin were detained without any evidence that they were any danger to our security. In retrospect, this internment has been shown by competent scholars and military officials to have been absolutely unnecessary as well as a horrendous violation of civil liberties. Similarly, in the so-called "Cold War" we had periods of McCarthyism that included widespread blacklisting and other abuses at