Pro Liberate
That persons who are hunting after places, offices and contracts, should be advocates for war, taxes and extravagance, is not to be wondered at..... The country, during the time of the former Administration, was kept in continual agitation and alarm; and that no investigation might be made into its conduct, it entrenched itself within a magic circle of terror, and called it a SEDITION LAW. --Thomas Paine, Letters to the Citizens of the United States (1802-1803), inspired by his outrage over the Alien and Sedition Acts.
"Hang him, shoot him or lock him up in a concentration camp."
To people not tutored in the nuances of Progressive dogma, those sentiments appear to be high-octane hate speech of the "eliminationist" variety. This Soviet-style prescription for dealing with dissent was offered during a March 1942 meeting of the Overseas Writers Association (OWA) that was attended by numerous high-ranking officials from FDR's administration.
The target of the OWA's Stalinoid hate session was a brace of refractory newspaper publishers -- Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune and Joe Patterson of the New York Daily News.
Utterly contemptuous of the Axis powers and unflinching in their commitment to an "America First" foreign policy, McCormick and Patterson were among those commendable souls whose marrow-deep contempt for fascism encompassed not only Hitler and Mussolini, but also Roosevelt, who would go on to be America's first fascist president-for-life.
Following Pearl Harbor -- an infamous incident in which FDR was, at the very least, a silent accomplice -- Roosevelt mounted an attempt to prosecute his domestic critics for disloyalty.
To that end he began barraging Attorney General Francis Biddle with press clippings from publications critical of his reign.
"Biddle started receiving notes from FDR ... asking `What are you doing to stop this?'" recalled historian Thomas Fleming in his valuable study The New Dealers' War. Had Biddle been serious about his constitutional oath, his one-word reply would have been: "Nothing." This wouldn't have availed much with FDR, who -- even in the dismal company of his fellow chief executives -- distinguished himself by his disdain for the Constitution. Roosevelt, observes Fleming, "was not much interested in the theory of sedition or in the constitutional right to criticize the government during wartime. He just wanted this anti-war talk stopped."
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