So the first were the Adam's instigated Alien and Sedition Acts during the Quasi War with France. Any anti-government speech was unlawful. The act was universally rejected by the citizens and probably contributed to Adam's defeat in the 1800 election.
Lincoln famously suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War.
In 1917 Wilson lamented that Lincoln had not gone far enough and created a new Sedition Act similar to Adam's but one with more teeth in that even if the sedition was the truth, you still committed a crime. This was probably the scariest time in US History regarding sedition. Even the great legal mind Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the opinion that Wilson's act was constitutional.
In our time we've seen the Patriot Act.
But today the trend is to move back to a Wilsonian mindset with the Capitol attack "outrage."
Have I missed anything of significance and are we about to enter a new dark period of sedition acts or am I being too pessimistic?
Lincoln famously suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War.
In 1917 Wilson lamented that Lincoln had not gone far enough and created a new Sedition Act similar to Adam's but one with more teeth in that even if the sedition was the truth, you still committed a crime. This was probably the scariest time in US History regarding sedition. Even the great legal mind Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the opinion that Wilson's act was constitutional.
In our time we've seen the Patriot Act.
But today the trend is to move back to a Wilsonian mindset with the Capitol attack "outrage."
Have I missed anything of significance and are we about to enter a new dark period of sedition acts or am I being too pessimistic?