Defiant Speech in Canton Ohio

[The Flaming Red Head]

Defiant Speech in Canton Ohio

snip

What was the purpose of this deliberate misrepresentation? It is so self-evident that it suggests itself. The purpose was to sow the seeds of dissension in our ranks; to have it appear that we were divided among ourselves; that we were pitted against each other, to our mutual undoing.

Snip

These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both, to deceive and overawe the people.

Snip

Every solitary one of these aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot. Every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These autocrats, these tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims -- they are the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight!

Snip

The Democrats and Republicans are continually talking about your patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches.

I would rather a thousand times
be a free soul in jail
than to be a sycophant coward in the streets!

http://www.pbs.org/greatspeeches/timeline/e_debs_s.html

[The Flaming Red Head]

1. Patriot Act 1 and 2

The Espionage Act made it a crime to help wartime enemies of the United States, but the Sedition Act made it a crime to express an opinion that contradicted that of the government.

Socialist Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison under this law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918

[The Flaming Red Head]

2. more restricted speech that got Debs put in jail (are we next?)

Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige, and their wealth, they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war anymore than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell...

http://www.pbs.org/greatspeeches/timeline/e_debs_s.html