9 ms·

Eugene Debs Was Jailed for Speaking Out Against WWI, 100 Years Ago This Week

175 points by wallace_f 8y ago

omeid2 8y ago
“The working class have never yet had a voice in declaring war,” Debs declared. “If war is right, let it be declared by the people – you, who have your lives to lose.” Those were dangerous words in June 1918. They still are. Little has changed in the past 100 years. The war is still declared by the rich, and the poor dies, on both sides.
- madaxe_again 8y ago
  War is a highly profitable enterprise - many of the industrial giants of the 20th century were built off the back of armaments, supplies (clothing and rations), and finance. As long as war remains wildly profitable, war will continue - and war always has been profitable, and likely always will be - right up until the point that there’s nothing left, and the profiteers realise they can’t eat a number in a ledger.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Also from the early 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
  - smallnamespace 8y ago
    > War is a highly profitable enterprise No, this is a relatively new phenomenon that arose after WWI, when warfare became highly industrialized and too costly to fight personally for the rich. During WWI, the aristocracy led from the front, as was their traditional calling, and they were mowed down in droves just like the most common soldier. For the British, an entire generation of their sons were killed at Marne, Verdun, the Somme, Ypres, and other large battles, and the effect was stark: At the outset of the 1870's, the British aristocracy could rightly consider themselves the most fortunate people on earth: they held the lion's share of land, wealth, and power in the world's greatest empire. By the end of the 1930's they had lost not only a generation of sons in the First World War, but also much of their prosperity, prestige and political significance. [1] This largely held true for the Austro-Hungarian elite (they were decimated and the empire was torn apart), the Germans, and every other participant in the fight. Note that historically, European aristocrats were military elites and were descended from the knightly class. The whole reason they were a cut above the population was because they would fight and take the danger first. The realization after WWI that war was simply a number's game doomed the legitimacy of their leadership in all countries. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/750411.The_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_British_Aristocracy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/750411.The_Decline_and_F...
    - mistrial9 8y ago
      feudal lords often but not always, strong soldiers. Intelligence and family bonds were also ways to become a feudal lord. The post above reminds us of an important truth (feudal lords fought and died themselves, in great numbers) but risks glorifying the feudal combat system, which resulted in alarming numbers of healthy males dying and maimed early in life.
    - bobwaycott 8y ago
      You seem to be asserting that those who profit from war are/were aristocracy. This is (and was) not the case. The industrialists and capitalists rose from outside the aristocracy. Your other comments on the cost of war to the aristocracy are on point, but that is orthogonal to recognizing those who find war profitable.
      - sswaner 8y ago
        The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson is an in-depth study of the economics of WW1. It covers where the billions went. The industrialists did very well, to the point that Eisenhower in his farewell address cautioned against them.
    - alfredallan1 8y ago
      Although it should be pointed out that many modern royal families still have a tradition of sending their sons to serve in the military for a period of time. I don’t have any figures on whether they go to actual combat, and if so, if they lead, or just take orders.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      I don't see how your post contradicts madaxe_again's. Are you saying those elites didn't profit from the pre-WWI wars? Yes, the early 20th century was a turning point, but it only changed who was profiting.
      - smallnamespace 8y ago
        Yes, the vast majority those elites did not profit, either in an economic (they mostly owned land, not corporations) nor more important (they / their sons were dead) sense; something like 1 in 4 young men were killed. Even at the turn of the century, the foundation of the wealth of the British aristocracy rested on ownership of land, agriculture, and control of the Empire. The Great War disrupted all three greatly. It was mainly the merchant and upper middle class that owned stocks, ran businesses, and profited from the war, with a tiny fraction of aristocrats benefiting. Most of the rest saw the value of their land go towards zero, their manors used for wartime purposes while their servants were conscripted away, their sons killed on the field of battle, and confiscatory tax rates imposed to help fund the war effort. This pattern was repeated again in WW2. There's a reason Downton Abbey is set on the eve of WW1 and goes into the interwar period — that's when the British aristocracy was systematically taken apart piece by piece. Common people largely supported monarchical, aristocratic governments before WW1. One reason was because their elites that actually put their money (and their lives) on the line for their nation... although sometimes with disastrous consequences. Note that historically, the world wars were when wealth inequality dropped the most quickly. The US raised marginal tax rates to 90% during WW2, and most wealth was real assets, which obviously suffered greatly all throughout Europe. In a total war, everyone can give up their lives, but the wealthy can also lose their wealth.
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    There is one trope that I despise in particular, and that is the idea that war profiteers drive countries to war over the backs of reluctant and unwilling populations. War is popular. I mean, look at how much of our modern entertainment glorifies war. The military is generally and genuinely the most popular public institution. The problem is, when a war loses its momentum, people lose their enthusiasm really quickly. People forget that the Iraq War, for example, actually had majority support when it broke out. War profiteers certainly exist, but they are a tiny minority, even of the military-industrial complex. There is a much larger segment of industry that is hurt by war: war means a loss of external markets, disruption of supply chains, increased cost of resources, higher taxes, lower internal demand, and massive destruction of property (should the war be fought on your soil). War is not profitable. The one thing that war is most closely connected with is higher taxes. The inability to pay for wars is probably the single largest contributor to the downfall of governments in recorded history.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - scarecrowbob 8y ago
      Many things that are profoundly expensive involve someone getting paid for them.
    - anon23423532 8y ago
      The iraq war had majority support because the intel community lied to the country and told them if we didn't go fight that millions would die from "weapons of mass destruction". In reality it was because Sadam had started selling oil in Euros instead of dollars
      - jcranmer 8y ago
        This is exactly the kind of conspiracy sentiment I decried in my post. Saddam Hussein had been playing a game of pretending that he had WMDs throughout most of the 1990s up to the Iraq War. The US intelligence community took those claims too much at face value, and when the UN inspectors went in to evaluate the evidence, they didn't say that Iraq had no WMDs, they said they couldn't find evidence of WMDs but the Iraqis were being too shifty to draw a firm conclusion. Unfortunately for Saddam, the Bush administration took this only reinforcing earlier beliefs that Iraq was fundamentally untrustworthy and hell-bent on WMDs, and was willing to go to war even without rock-solid evidence (unlike the EU, which saw the lack of evidence as a good reason to do nothing).
- merpnderp 8y ago
  Little has changed? Yeah right, when people marched in the streets burning effigies of George Bush in protest against the Iraq War, literally nothing happened to them. You can go out and protest any war you want, often stomping on other people's civil rights to do it, and the judges will be super lenient of your civil rights violations because they were done in the name of political speech. And calling modern volunteer soldiers poor is an insult. Underpaid would be fair.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    That's objectively false. To say nothing happened to them ignores those that were arrested even during peaceful protests and I would like to see some citations on that claim of people violating other people's civil rights.
    - merpnderp 8y ago
      "Peacefully" disrupting some event or people's lives? That's like saying they were arrested for peacefully infringing on other people's civil rights. And no need for a citation, I'm talking about protestors who go to events to disrupt them and then are arrested. People have a first amendment right to speak, and that includes not having loud disruptive hecklers veto that right.
      - fzeroracer 8y ago
        I hope you realize your logic sounds all too similar to the arguments made against black men and women during the civil rights era being 'disruptive'. And yes, I want citations. I want you to cite these disruptive events. I want you to actually prove your point.
        merpnderp 8y ago
        How many events held to hear someone speak were disrupted last year? You're either pedantic or so uniformed you shouldn't be part of the conversation. And your specious and slanderous statement that my arguments are similar to those made against the civil rights movement can go to hell. There's a world of difference between walking into a restaurant and waiting to be served versus walking into a speech and coordinating to shout and heckle the speaker so that they can't be heard. And if you can't grasp the difference, what could possibly be the point of discussing this further with you?
- duxup 8y ago
  Sadly the poor are often happy to do it....
101km 8y ago
For some color, watch Mark Ruffalo read Eugene Debs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuGp-0G1p4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuGp-0G1p4M
- billsmithaustin 8y ago
  Or this version, read by Bernie Sanders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvMu70olQtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvMu70olQtU
  - prolikewhoa 8y ago
    This is far too leftist for HN.
    - kenmicklas 8y ago
      I can only pray that posts like this one will slowly raise class consciousness in the HN crowd.
    - techntoke 8y ago
      They'll get over it, or if not then downvote you and block you from being able to post for a while.
user982 8y ago
This was one of a clutch of related cases before the Supreme Court that gave us the pro-censorship cliché about "shouting fire in a theater."[1] The Espionage Act that they were convicted under is, of course, still on the books, and now primarily used against whistleblowers and leakers. [1]: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/ https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
- zeth___ 8y ago
  And of course Obama used it more than all other presidents combined. Which is why a libertarian had a really odd choice to make last election: go with someone who has hollowed out the constitution in her time in office as much as possible, or go with someone who promises to hollow out different parts of it. Or not vote.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    > And of course Obama used it more than all other presidents combined. Could you provide a source for that?
    - tuxxy 8y ago
      A quick Google search would do you well. Take this article for example: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-manning https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowe... Or even this one: https://www.longislandpress.com/2017/01/14/obamas-legacy-historic-war-on-whistleblowers/ https://www.longislandpress.com/2017/01/14/obamas-legacy-his...
    - cam_l 8y ago
      Not the op but.. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/jake-tapper/cnns-tapper-obama-has-used-espionage-act-more-all-/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/...
  - tpush 8y ago
j16sdiz 8y ago
It is just socialist, anti-capitalist, not anti-war: > “I know of no reason why the workers should fight for what the capitalists own,” ... “I will never go to war for a capitalist government,” It is ironic how later “socialist” country manage to kill their own civilians.
agumonkey 8y ago
all in all, the best option is to run as far away from war as possible
- simonh 8y ago
  Leaving any faction willing to actively seek out and start wars to win by default, unopposed even by a faction only willing to use it to protect itself and it's allies? I'm not saying there's any perfect formula for only using warfare for protection. Who counts as deserving protection? What exactly are the circumstances in which war is justified? How aggressively should war be used even for protection in any particular circumstance? these are difficult and contentious issues. However there absolutely are people out there who don't care a fig for any of that, will gleefully use war to further their aims and will pursue it to their maximum advantage if free to do so. Those people have to be stopped somehow.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    Sure, but when a nation has been propped up into war, there's no point into going against. If I may rephrase my previous comment, war is a like a tsunami, it's absurd to stand up to it, find voids and wait until it's over.
    - musage 8y ago
      It's not "absurd" to make a moral stand based on personal principles.
    - alfredallan1 8y ago
      That strategy won’t work against a sufficiently determined adversary, if they’re willing to eliminate all potential enemy combatants (= civilians) and capture all the resources of the defeated entity for themselves.
      - Latteland 8y ago
        There was WW2 and then everything else in terms of clarity between good and evil. The vast majority of conflicts the US has been involved in were not so clear cut, like say Vietnam, Iraq 2. I guess all the atrocities weren't visible at the start of WW2; there was a clear difference with Japan and Germany, and they could have won ww 2. Imagine a war today with the US vs China, fought over say freedom of access to the ocean, those atolls in the South China Sea.
tomohawk 8y ago
This is more about Woodrow Wilson, than Debs. Wilson, like many progressives, thought that you should never let things like the constitution get in the way of doing "good". His version of "good" was that he was a massive racist. Among other things, he resegregated the federal government, ending the careers of many who were not white. He also did not like freedom of speech or the press. He prevented magazines and newspapers he disagreed with from going through the mail. Nice piece of work.
- adrianratnapala 8y ago
  All of the above insults are true; but it's not about Wilson being some kind of two-headed monster. As an internationalist, and an idealist, he has quite been seen as a hero as well. So it's not about one man at all. It's about ends-vs.-means and the importance of respecting inconvenient rights.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  How can you claim Wilson was a progressive when he clearly acted like a reactionary? He in fact won against the progressive party in 1912 (against Roosevelt and others), and ushered in the end of the progressive era.
  - ameister14 8y ago
    He created the FTC, instituted major banking reform and created the Fed as well as instituted a graduated income tax. He made child labor illegal and signed into law an 8 hour work day. He created the League of Nations. Most people consider him a progressive.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      It just shows that framing the world as liberal/conservative , left/right, capitalist/socialist and expecting people to fall neatly and consistently into on of these camps is a stupid thing. People are much more complex and their actions in one area often don't reflect what they do in another. For example, there are probably racist environmentalists and racists who protect the environment which is something that shouldn't exist if you follow the usual beliefs about environmentalists or racists.
stareatgoats 8y ago
The era most similar to ours could arguably well be the pre-WW1 era, with several imperialist powers vying for larger markets and better raw material supplies, without any real threat of a socialist revolution, which at the core had the notion of workers unity across nation borders. It is mainly the reason that socialism is not a threat that differs: then socialism had not yet proven itself as a viable form of government; now it has been disproved. It makes we worry that we have no real leverage against the modern-day imperialists that are increasingly sounding their trumpets of war.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  > The era most similar to ours could arguably well be the pre-WW1 era, with several imperialist powers vying for larger markets and better raw material supplies, without any real threat of a socialist revolution, which at the core had the notion of workers unity across nation borders. Uh, false? One of the major factors in the breakout of WWI was that all of the major European powers had massive, divisive conflicts (largely related to class), and their leaders felt that a war would be a good way to help bring unity to their own country while looking over at their competitors and feeling that a war would push the other countries over the edge.
  - stareatgoats 8y ago
    false? false I think. The two descriptions complement each other, they are not mutually exclusive.
  - Latteland 8y ago
    Replace the conflicting and overlapping disputes and treaties in pre-ww 1 Wurope with the same thing in the middle east today. I expect the middle east will trigger the next great war.
wallace_f 8y ago
Bit of a meta comment: how often do HN mods typically change post titles? I've noticed posts I've submitted which have their title's changed (sometimes for good reason), have the change made after garnering the majority of their upvotes.
shanghaiaway 8y ago
"Land of the free"
- prolikewhoa 8y ago
  Unless you speak out against capitalism, then you get shot in the head. MLK also shot for this reason, see: Poor Peoples Campaign.
  - kenmicklas 8y ago
    I don't disagree in the sentiment but I think it is ahistorical to say that MLK was shot for speaking against capitalism.
- techntoke 8y ago
  Land of the rich is more like it.
Latteland 8y ago
I didn't know we had anti-sedition laws during WW1. Another reason not to like that notorious racist Woodrow Wilson. I half expect them to come back, and I'm not being sarcastic. I worry about my own teenage son getting drafted for a pointless war. It seems we couldn't be trying harder to repeat the actions that lead up to the depression and 1930s pre-war any better. Replace Japan with China, maybe Germany with Russia and you can start arguing that we don't need trade with these countries. Destructive tariffs, breaking trade connections that should have been reducing the appeal for conflict.

175 points by wallace_f 8y ago

“The working class have never yet had a voice in declaring war,” Debs declared. “If war is right, let it be declared by the people – you, who have your lives to lose.” Those were dangerous words in June 1918. They still are. Little has changed in the past 100 years. The war is still declared by the rich, and the poor dies, on both sides.

madaxe_again 8y ago
War is a highly profitable enterprise - many of the industrial giants of the 20th century were built off the back of armaments, supplies (clothing and rations), and finance. As long as war remains wildly profitable, war will continue - and war always has been profitable, and likely always will be - right up until the point that there’s nothing left, and the profiteers realise they can’t eat a number in a ledger.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Also from the early 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
- smallnamespace 8y ago
  > War is a highly profitable enterprise No, this is a relatively new phenomenon that arose after WWI, when warfare became highly industrialized and too costly to fight personally for the rich. During WWI, the aristocracy led from the front, as was their traditional calling, and they were mowed down in droves just like the most common soldier. For the British, an entire generation of their sons were killed at Marne, Verdun, the Somme, Ypres, and other large battles, and the effect was stark: At the outset of the 1870's, the British aristocracy could rightly consider themselves the most fortunate people on earth: they held the lion's share of land, wealth, and power in the world's greatest empire. By the end of the 1930's they had lost not only a generation of sons in the First World War, but also much of their prosperity, prestige and political significance. [1] This largely held true for the Austro-Hungarian elite (they were decimated and the empire was torn apart), the Germans, and every other participant in the fight. Note that historically, European aristocrats were military elites and were descended from the knightly class. The whole reason they were a cut above the population was because they would fight and take the danger first. The realization after WWI that war was simply a number's game doomed the legitimacy of their leadership in all countries. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/750411.The_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_British_Aristocracy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/750411.The_Decline_and_F...
  - mistrial9 8y ago
    feudal lords often but not always, strong soldiers. Intelligence and family bonds were also ways to become a feudal lord. The post above reminds us of an important truth (feudal lords fought and died themselves, in great numbers) but risks glorifying the feudal combat system, which resulted in alarming numbers of healthy males dying and maimed early in life.
  - bobwaycott 8y ago
    You seem to be asserting that those who profit from war are/were aristocracy. This is (and was) not the case. The industrialists and capitalists rose from outside the aristocracy. Your other comments on the cost of war to the aristocracy are on point, but that is orthogonal to recognizing those who find war profitable.
    - sswaner 8y ago
      The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson is an in-depth study of the economics of WW1. It covers where the billions went. The industrialists did very well, to the point that Eisenhower in his farewell address cautioned against them.
  - alfredallan1 8y ago
    Although it should be pointed out that many modern royal families still have a tradition of sending their sons to serve in the military for a period of time. I don’t have any figures on whether they go to actual combat, and if so, if they lead, or just take orders.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    I don't see how your post contradicts madaxe_again's. Are you saying those elites didn't profit from the pre-WWI wars? Yes, the early 20th century was a turning point, but it only changed who was profiting.
    - smallnamespace 8y ago
      Yes, the vast majority those elites did not profit, either in an economic (they mostly owned land, not corporations) nor more important (they / their sons were dead) sense; something like 1 in 4 young men were killed. Even at the turn of the century, the foundation of the wealth of the British aristocracy rested on ownership of land, agriculture, and control of the Empire. The Great War disrupted all three greatly. It was mainly the merchant and upper middle class that owned stocks, ran businesses, and profited from the war, with a tiny fraction of aristocrats benefiting. Most of the rest saw the value of their land go towards zero, their manors used for wartime purposes while their servants were conscripted away, their sons killed on the field of battle, and confiscatory tax rates imposed to help fund the war effort. This pattern was repeated again in WW2. There's a reason Downton Abbey is set on the eve of WW1 and goes into the interwar period — that's when the British aristocracy was systematically taken apart piece by piece. Common people largely supported monarchical, aristocratic governments before WW1. One reason was because their elites that actually put their money (and their lives) on the line for their nation... although sometimes with disastrous consequences. Note that historically, the world wars were when wealth inequality dropped the most quickly. The US raised marginal tax rates to 90% during WW2, and most wealth was real assets, which obviously suffered greatly all throughout Europe. In a total war, everyone can give up their lives, but the wealthy can also lose their wealth.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  There is one trope that I despise in particular, and that is the idea that war profiteers drive countries to war over the backs of reluctant and unwilling populations. War is popular. I mean, look at how much of our modern entertainment glorifies war. The military is generally and genuinely the most popular public institution. The problem is, when a war loses its momentum, people lose their enthusiasm really quickly. People forget that the Iraq War, for example, actually had majority support when it broke out. War profiteers certainly exist, but they are a tiny minority, even of the military-industrial complex. There is a much larger segment of industry that is hurt by war: war means a loss of external markets, disruption of supply chains, increased cost of resources, higher taxes, lower internal demand, and massive destruction of property (should the war be fought on your soil). War is not profitable. The one thing that war is most closely connected with is higher taxes. The inability to pay for wars is probably the single largest contributor to the downfall of governments in recorded history.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - scarecrowbob 8y ago
    Many things that are profoundly expensive involve someone getting paid for them.
  - anon23423532 8y ago
    The iraq war had majority support because the intel community lied to the country and told them if we didn't go fight that millions would die from "weapons of mass destruction". In reality it was because Sadam had started selling oil in Euros instead of dollars
    - jcranmer 8y ago
      This is exactly the kind of conspiracy sentiment I decried in my post. Saddam Hussein had been playing a game of pretending that he had WMDs throughout most of the 1990s up to the Iraq War. The US intelligence community took those claims too much at face value, and when the UN inspectors went in to evaluate the evidence, they didn't say that Iraq had no WMDs, they said they couldn't find evidence of WMDs but the Iraqis were being too shifty to draw a firm conclusion. Unfortunately for Saddam, the Bush administration took this only reinforcing earlier beliefs that Iraq was fundamentally untrustworthy and hell-bent on WMDs, and was willing to go to war even without rock-solid evidence (unlike the EU, which saw the lack of evidence as a good reason to do nothing).
merpnderp 8y ago
Little has changed? Yeah right, when people marched in the streets burning effigies of George Bush in protest against the Iraq War, literally nothing happened to them. You can go out and protest any war you want, often stomping on other people's civil rights to do it, and the judges will be super lenient of your civil rights violations because they were done in the name of political speech. And calling modern volunteer soldiers poor is an insult. Underpaid would be fair.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  That's objectively false. To say nothing happened to them ignores those that were arrested even during peaceful protests and I would like to see some citations on that claim of people violating other people's civil rights.
  - merpnderp 8y ago
    "Peacefully" disrupting some event or people's lives? That's like saying they were arrested for peacefully infringing on other people's civil rights. And no need for a citation, I'm talking about protestors who go to events to disrupt them and then are arrested. People have a first amendment right to speak, and that includes not having loud disruptive hecklers veto that right.
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      I hope you realize your logic sounds all too similar to the arguments made against black men and women during the civil rights era being 'disruptive'. And yes, I want citations. I want you to cite these disruptive events. I want you to actually prove your point.
      - merpnderp 8y ago
        How many events held to hear someone speak were disrupted last year? You're either pedantic or so uniformed you shouldn't be part of the conversation. And your specious and slanderous statement that my arguments are similar to those made against the civil rights movement can go to hell. There's a world of difference between walking into a restaurant and waiting to be served versus walking into a speech and coordinating to shout and heckle the speaker so that they can't be heard. And if you can't grasp the difference, what could possibly be the point of discussing this further with you?
duxup 8y ago
Sadly the poor are often happy to do it....

101km 8y ago

For some color, watch Mark Ruffalo read Eugene Debs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuGp-0G1p4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuGp-0G1p4M

billsmithaustin 8y ago
Or this version, read by Bernie Sanders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvMu70olQtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvMu70olQtU
- prolikewhoa 8y ago
  This is far too leftist for HN.
  - kenmicklas 8y ago
    I can only pray that posts like this one will slowly raise class consciousness in the HN crowd.
  - techntoke 8y ago
    They'll get over it, or if not then downvote you and block you from being able to post for a while.

user982 8y ago

This was one of a clutch of related cases before the Supreme Court that gave us the pro-censorship cliché about "shouting fire in a theater."[1] The Espionage Act that they were convicted under is, of course, still on the books, and now primarily used against whistleblowers and leakers. [1]: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/ https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

zeth___ 8y ago
And of course Obama used it more than all other presidents combined. Which is why a libertarian had a really odd choice to make last election: go with someone who has hollowed out the constitution in her time in office as much as possible, or go with someone who promises to hollow out different parts of it. Or not vote.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  > And of course Obama used it more than all other presidents combined. Could you provide a source for that?
  - tuxxy 8y ago
    A quick Google search would do you well. Take this article for example: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-manning https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowe... Or even this one: https://www.longislandpress.com/2017/01/14/obamas-legacy-historic-war-on-whistleblowers/ https://www.longislandpress.com/2017/01/14/obamas-legacy-his...
  - cam_l 8y ago
    Not the op but.. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/jake-tapper/cnns-tapper-obama-has-used-espionage-act-more-all-/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/...
- tpush 8y ago

j16sdiz 8y ago

It is just socialist, anti-capitalist, not anti-war: > “I know of no reason why the workers should fight for what the capitalists own,” ... “I will never go to war for a capitalist government,” It is ironic how later “socialist” country manage to kill their own civilians.

agumonkey 8y ago

all in all, the best option is to run as far away from war as possible

simonh 8y ago
Leaving any faction willing to actively seek out and start wars to win by default, unopposed even by a faction only willing to use it to protect itself and it's allies? I'm not saying there's any perfect formula for only using warfare for protection. Who counts as deserving protection? What exactly are the circumstances in which war is justified? How aggressively should war be used even for protection in any particular circumstance? these are difficult and contentious issues. However there absolutely are people out there who don't care a fig for any of that, will gleefully use war to further their aims and will pursue it to their maximum advantage if free to do so. Those people have to be stopped somehow.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  Sure, but when a nation has been propped up into war, there's no point into going against. If I may rephrase my previous comment, war is a like a tsunami, it's absurd to stand up to it, find voids and wait until it's over.
  - musage 8y ago
    It's not "absurd" to make a moral stand based on personal principles.
  - alfredallan1 8y ago
    That strategy won’t work against a sufficiently determined adversary, if they’re willing to eliminate all potential enemy combatants (= civilians) and capture all the resources of the defeated entity for themselves.
    - Latteland 8y ago
      There was WW2 and then everything else in terms of clarity between good and evil. The vast majority of conflicts the US has been involved in were not so clear cut, like say Vietnam, Iraq 2. I guess all the atrocities weren't visible at the start of WW2; there was a clear difference with Japan and Germany, and they could have won ww 2. Imagine a war today with the US vs China, fought over say freedom of access to the ocean, those atolls in the South China Sea.

tomohawk 8y ago

This is more about Woodrow Wilson, than Debs. Wilson, like many progressives, thought that you should never let things like the constitution get in the way of doing "good". His version of "good" was that he was a massive racist. Among other things, he resegregated the federal government, ending the careers of many who were not white. He also did not like freedom of speech or the press. He prevented magazines and newspapers he disagreed with from going through the mail. Nice piece of work.

adrianratnapala 8y ago
All of the above insults are true; but it's not about Wilson being some kind of two-headed monster. As an internationalist, and an idealist, he has quite been seen as a hero as well. So it's not about one man at all. It's about ends-vs.-means and the importance of respecting inconvenient rights.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
How can you claim Wilson was a progressive when he clearly acted like a reactionary? He in fact won against the progressive party in 1912 (against Roosevelt and others), and ushered in the end of the progressive era.
- ameister14 8y ago
  He created the FTC, instituted major banking reform and created the Fed as well as instituted a graduated income tax. He made child labor illegal and signed into law an 8 hour work day. He created the League of Nations. Most people consider him a progressive.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    It just shows that framing the world as liberal/conservative , left/right, capitalist/socialist and expecting people to fall neatly and consistently into on of these camps is a stupid thing. People are much more complex and their actions in one area often don't reflect what they do in another. For example, there are probably racist environmentalists and racists who protect the environment which is something that shouldn't exist if you follow the usual beliefs about environmentalists or racists.

stareatgoats 8y ago

The era most similar to ours could arguably well be the pre-WW1 era, with several imperialist powers vying for larger markets and better raw material supplies, without any real threat of a socialist revolution, which at the core had the notion of workers unity across nation borders. It is mainly the reason that socialism is not a threat that differs: then socialism had not yet proven itself as a viable form of government; now it has been disproved. It makes we worry that we have no real leverage against the modern-day imperialists that are increasingly sounding their trumpets of war.

jcranmer 8y ago
> The era most similar to ours could arguably well be the pre-WW1 era, with several imperialist powers vying for larger markets and better raw material supplies, without any real threat of a socialist revolution, which at the core had the notion of workers unity across nation borders. Uh, false? One of the major factors in the breakout of WWI was that all of the major European powers had massive, divisive conflicts (largely related to class), and their leaders felt that a war would be a good way to help bring unity to their own country while looking over at their competitors and feeling that a war would push the other countries over the edge.
- stareatgoats 8y ago
  false? false I think. The two descriptions complement each other, they are not mutually exclusive.
- Latteland 8y ago
  Replace the conflicting and overlapping disputes and treaties in pre-ww 1 Wurope with the same thing in the middle east today. I expect the middle east will trigger the next great war.

wallace_f 8y ago

Bit of a meta comment: how often do HN mods typically change post titles? I've noticed posts I've submitted which have their title's changed (sometimes for good reason), have the change made after garnering the majority of their upvotes.

shanghaiaway 8y ago

"Land of the free"

prolikewhoa 8y ago
Unless you speak out against capitalism, then you get shot in the head. MLK also shot for this reason, see: Poor Peoples Campaign.
- kenmicklas 8y ago
  I don't disagree in the sentiment but I think it is ahistorical to say that MLK was shot for speaking against capitalism.
techntoke 8y ago
Land of the rich is more like it.

Latteland 8y ago

I didn't know we had anti-sedition laws during WW1. Another reason not to like that notorious racist Woodrow Wilson. I half expect them to come back, and I'm not being sarcastic. I worry about my own teenage son getting drafted for a pointless war. It seems we couldn't be trying harder to repeat the actions that lead up to the depression and 1930s pre-war any better. Replace Japan with China, maybe Germany with Russia and you can start arguing that we don't need trade with these countries. Destructive tariffs, breaking trade connections that should have been reducing the appeal for conflict.