Politicians and commentators in the U.S. often say that the country’s wars have helped protect its freedom. But what we know about history doesn’t back up this claim. In fact, U.S. wars have caused major restrictions on civil liberties over the past 100 years.
Shortly after the U.S. joined World War I, seven states passed laws that made it harder for people to speak their minds and get the news out. Congress joined them in June 1917 when it passed the Espionage Act. This law gave the federal government the power to censor publications and keep them from getting sent through the mail. It also made it illegal to try to stop people from joining the military or being drafted, which could lead to a large fine and up to 20 years in prison. After that, the U.S. government shut down newspapers and magazines and sent over 1,500 people to prison for long terms because they were against the war. Eugene V. Debs, a well-known labour leader and presidential candidate for the Socialist Party, was one of these people. Teachers were fired from public schools and universities, and elected state and federal lawmakers who were against the war were not allowed to take office. Religious pacifists who were drafted into the military but refused to carry weapons were forced to wear uniforms, were beaten, stabbed with bayonets, dragged by ropes around their necks, tortured, and killed. It was the worst time in U.S. history when the government tried to control people, and it led to the creation of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Even though America’s record on civil liberties was much better during World War II, the country’s involvement in that war did lead to serious restrictions on civil liberties. The internment camps where the government put 110,000 people of Japanese descent are probably the most well-known. Two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens. Most of them were born in the U.S., and so were many of their parents. In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act. It apologised for the wartime internment, which was clearly against the Constitution, and paid survivors and their families money to make up for it. But the war also caused other rights violations, like locking up about 6,000 people who didn’t want to fight and putting about 12,000 others in camps for Civilian Public Service. Congress also passed the Smith Act, which made calling for the government to be overthrown a crime punishable by 20 years in jail. Since this law was used to prosecute and jail people who just talked about revolution in a general way, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually made it much narrower.
With the start of the Cold War, things got a lot worse for civil liberties. The House Un-American Activities Committee in Congress kept files on more than a million Americans whose loyalty it questioned. It also held contentious hearings to find people who were thought to be subversives. Senator Joseph McCarthy jumped right in and started making false accusations of Communism and treason. He used his political power and, later, a Senate investigations subcommittee to hurt people’s reputations and scare them. The president, on the other hand, set up the Attorney General’s List of “subversive” groups and the federal Loyalty Program, which led to the firing of thousands of U.S. government workers. On the federal, state, and local levels, it became normal for people to have to sign loyalty oaths. By 1952, teachers in 30 states had to take some kind of loyalty oath. Even though this effort to find “un-Americans” never led to the capture of a single spy or saboteur, it did cause a lot of trouble for people and spread fear across the country.
When protests against the Vietnam War started to happen on a large scale, the federal government stepped up its programme of repression. Since World War I, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had been giving his agency more power, and his COINTELPRO programme was a big step in that direction. COINTELPRO’s goal was to find out about, disrupt, and stop the new wave of activism by any means necessary. To do this, it spread false, bad information about dissident leaders and organisations, started fights between their leaders and members, and used violence and burglary. It went after almost all movements for social change, like the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the environmental movement. The FBI had a lot of information on millions of Americans it thought of as national enemies or potential enemies, and it put many of them under surveillance, including writers, teachers, activists, and U.S. senators. Hoover was sure that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dangerous subversive, so he tried many things to get rid of him, including trying to get him to kill himself.
In the 1970s, U.S. intelligence agencies were limited because bad things were found out about them. However, wars in the 1980s and 1990s led to a new wave of police state measures. In 1981, the FBI started looking into people and groups that were against President Reagan’s use of the military in Central America. It sent spies to political meetings, broke into churches, members’ homes, and group offices, and kept an eye on hundreds of peace rallies. The National Council of Churches, the United Auto Workers, and the Maryknoll Sisters of the Roman Catholic Church were among the groups that were attacked. After the Global War on Terror started, the last controls on U.S. intelligence agencies were taken away. The Patriot Act gave the government a lot of power to spy on people, even if they were not suspected of doing anything wrong. At the same time, the National Security Agency collected all phone and internet communications from Americans.
The problem isn’t something special about the United States. Instead, it’s the fact that war isn’t good for freedom. During war, when fear is high and nationalism is high, governments and many of their citizens see disagreement as treason. When things are like this, “national security” usually comes before freedom. During World War I, the journalist Randolph Bourne said, “War is the health of the state.” This is something that Americans who value freedom should keep in mind.