Deportations by the Boatload

Still reading American Anarchy, a remarkable book that was well worth the time it is taking from my evenings. I had not realized how incredibly destructive the First World War was to the United States history and traditions, but I now see that the powers seized by the government in that war laid the foundation for the whole security state. The Bureau of Investigation's counterintelligence work in immigrant communities gave rise to the FBI and all the other three-letter police agencies. The NYPD allowed members of its bomb squad (focused as they were on Russian Jewish and Italian bomb-making threats in the migrant communities) to be commissioned into US Army Intelligence and to operate as military counterintelligence within the civilian community. The Espionage Act and later the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment as we understand it today almost completely,* and people were sent to prison for arguing that the draft was unconstitutional or that registering for Selective Service was. 

The Department of Labor, which had been given control of immigration (there was some honesty! Mass immigration was always about providing cheap labor) began stripping the citizenship and arranging for deportations of aliens who had too much to say about America's injustice to workers. Whole shiploads at a time were eventually being sent to now-Soviet Russia. 

Everything we hear complaints about today was being done at a far worse level during the Wilson administration. Woodrow Wilson is of course one of the most admired of Democratic Presidents among today's progressives, even though he was a terrible racist who segregated Washington D.C. He was powerful and effective at transforming the state towards his vision, though, having promised to keep America out of War and then leading her to it instead once re-elected. 

Just today, the WaPo has an editorial arguing that our current moment is different that bows to Wilson as well as to other Presidents who've violated the constitutional order to resolve crises:

At the beginning of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was the government of the United States for 11 weeks, not even calling Congress back into session until he could get the Union war effort begun in a direction he single-handedly established. He blockaded Southern ports, a belligerent act widely understood to be the sole province of Congress. He spent tax dollars that had not been appropriated to raise, provision and deploy troops — all without specific legislative authorization. Later in the war he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which by the conventions of the day amounted to a monumental taking of private property.

Lincoln’s powers were later dwarfed by Woodrow Wilson in World War I, who could, among other things, direct Americans as to how much sugar they could add to their morning coffee. Wilson was granted by a compliant Congress the power to distribute fuels and other public necessaries; to fix wheat prices and coal prices; to take over factories and mines; and to regulate the production of intoxicants. Enhanced legal constraints were created by Congress to control treasonous utterances and punish disloyalty, which the president executed, energetically, through the federal courts.

And during the Great Depression, and then the Second World War, Franklin D. Roosevelt ran a command economy. For a time, he shut down the nation’s banks. 

The author, Russell Riley of the University of Virginia, only alludes to the horrors of the Espionage and Sedition Acts. He does mention that unlike the current President, President Wilson had the support of Congress and the courts. He adds later: 

Wilson became America’s closest approximation to a prime minister, openly courting congressional authorization for virtually everything he did. His Congress was a full governing partner.

So too the Supreme Court, which ruled 9-0 against any suggestion that being drafted against your will to fight and possibly die in a war you didn't support was a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment's clause against involuntary servitude; also against the claim that it was a violation of the First Amendment's freedom of conscience protections.**  

It's been a whole lot worse, and all on the side of consolidating Federal power and control over all levels of American life. At least this administration is sometimes on the side of reducing such power and control, even if they are more enamored of power and control than I wish they were. 

* As for freedom of speech or the press, the Supreme Court didn't see anything wrong with imprisoning you for things like talking bad about the Navy or the war or the President, or suggesting that the draft was wrong or illegal. They only thought the First Amendment prevented prior restraint on speech, but you could be punished however the government liked after you'd been allowed to speak. You could print what you liked as long as you went to prison for it, and with the understanding that so would anyone who helped to distribute the things you printed, that military intelligence would be employed to raid their homes and arrest their compatriots, and that the US Mail would censor and destroy any you tried to send by mail, even in sealed envelopes that the government was free to open and read through to ensure it wasn't forbidden thought being sent. Or birth control advice.

** The draft did allow for conscientious objectors, but only if they were from 'well recognized' religions, and not for secular reasons nor for religions that weren't recognized by the state. The latter omission would today be regarded as a 'establishment of religion' violation, but the SCOTUS of that era didn't think so; they were satisfied that they were willing to admit more than one religion into the category.