- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I got another book that is sickeningly evocative of the last few months: Democracy's Prisoner by Ernest Freeberg. It depicts the naive astonishment by American socialists and the left that their hero, the Progressive Woodrow Wilson, would not only refuse to pardon and release from prison Eugene Debs -- who was convicted of violating the outrageous anti-sedition laws passed in the midst of WWI hysteria- but also would personally foster a period of the worst repression that this country has ever seen. As with today, many of the progressives kidded themselves that Wilson was under the evil influence of other members of his adminstration: like he couldn't overrule his own Post Master general, who was busy censoring nearly every left wing publication out of business! It fell to the justly maligned Warren Harding to finally pardon Debs, who would otherwise have died in jail. If I sent this book to Obama, do you think he'd understand the gesture?
