>On Jan 3, 2008, at 11:55 AM, Seth Ackerman wrote:
>
>
>
>>* During WWII - while fighting against several xxxxx regimes no
>>less! -
>>the US government put 120,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration
>>camps.
>>
>>
>
>Don't forget WW I, when Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in jail
>(he served more than two before Harding commuted his sentence),
>thousands were rounded up and deported, and The Nation was banned
>from the mails.
>
>
I was going to mention this. It's actually the best example. Think of the scariest aspects of late 2001 and 2002 and then multiply by 1,000. People were getting thrown in jail for making mildly critical comments about the war in casual conversation. We had freedom fries, and they had liberty cabbage, but the hysteria was so intense in that moment that you could get beaten up by a mob of respectable citizens just for using the word sauerkraut. A few years later everything was back to normal. Left-wing labor unions even organized a mildly successful third-party presidential bid by LaFollette in 1924.
Seth