The Beginning of the End

Americans tend to have a linear view of their history, a view in which we go from A to B with the occasional detour or stall but on an essentially logical and consistent course of expansion and improvement. For example, our definition of citizen has slowly but surely expanded. But there are areas in which we are worse off as a "free people" than we were 100 years ago.

Ironically enough, most Americans were in a sense more "free" during a period in which blacks and women could not vote. How could that be? We first have to define what we mean here by "freedom". Freedom in this case means freedom from a tyrannical government, rather than the freedom to vote. For the right to vote is useless, purely cosmetic, if one lives in a tyranny.

There was very little official tyranny in this country 100 years ago. Neglect, corruption, racism, soulless industrialism. All those things existed, of course. But as we have worked on curing all those ills, we have gone from a nation without official tyranny and without imperialism to the exact opposite.

We have learned to treat one another better. We have vastly improved our standard of living. We have crushed other tyrannies. But during that period, we lost our republic. And Woodrow Wilson was the man most responsible for killing it.

Woodrow Wilson was a tyrant, the closest we have ever come to having a dictator, and of course he is regularly described as one of our "greatest" presidents. There are two sides to Wilson's tyranny, domestic and foreign affairs. He used one against the other in expanding his dictatorial rule.

Domestically, Wilson was a "Progressive". This is a complicated ideology. At its best, it forces efficiency, transparency, and a sense of moral mission onto the jealous power of the state. At its worst, it gives control of government to unelected people while simultaneously expanding the authority of the government in all matters.

The focus here is more on Wilson's foreign policy and how it affected the way he governed. Wilson was re-elected in 1916 on the pledge to keep the United States out of the Great War then being waged in Europe. That was his platform. Peace.

Just as FDR in 1940 and LBJ in 1964, Americans in 1916 voted for the candidate that promised peace. In all cases we ended up with war, but we must remember and rejoice in the fact that the American people never knowingly voted for a war party until 2002. At any rate the point here is that in 1916 Americans explicitly voted for peace.

Wilson promptly gave them war. Now, for the sake of this argument, let us just assume that joining World War I was the right thing for us to do. To assume that truly makes an ass of u and me, but we'll just concede it for the sake of argument: The Great War was a Great Idea. The real point is what happened at home.

Wilson used the war to make himself dictator. He criminalized dissent. Any "utterance or publication" that "criticized the government" was illegal. Literally. Wilson was in charge of identifying these critics, of course, and Wilson became the state. Therefore any criticism of Wilson or anything he did or said was illegal.

Thousands were arrested. These were political prisoners, pure and simple. No prominent historians use this term, of course, employing the same rhetorical sophistry that forbids people from using the word "terrorist" to describe a white man who flies a plane into a building.

Scores of newspapers were shut down, their editors imprisoned and bankrupted. And as always, the true damage done is not indicated only by the number of arrests; what can not be adequately measured is the self-silencing that Americans imposed on themselves due to a fear of their own government.

Since it was illegal to oppose Wilson, politicians were fair game as well. The Socialist Party was huge in the United States during this period. One of the rationales of the tyranny of Wilson was that the "undesirable classes" were beginning to demand a bit too much from the government and were in need of a "firm hand" from Wilson and the new federal oligarchy, bristling with such new institutions as the FBI and IRS.

The Socialist Party was led by Eugene Debs. Wilson had Debs imprisoned for criticizing the war. He remained in prison until Wilson left office, having refused to pardon Debs for the unpardonable sin of criticizing Woodrow Wilson. Debs ran for president in 1920 from a prison cell. He got over 2 million votes.

Among Wilson's other contributions to our civilization? He came up with the brilliant idea of deputizing citizens to keep tabs on radical neighbors, aka paying citizens to betray fellow citizens with suspect political views. He started mass deportations of "anarchistic" elements. You know, like "Italians". Guilt by association became law under Wilson.

One last absurd example of Wilson's America: since we were allied with England in the Great War Wilson had just joined, and since it was illegal to criticize our policy, it was therefore illegal to criticize the British as well. After all, if our allies looked bad, we might look bad too.

Around this time one of the first feature-length motion pictures was released. The Spirit of '76 was the story of the American Revolution. The story of our triumph over the despised and tyrannical British. But since the British were now our friends, this simply would not do. The director was imprisoned. And so in Wilson's America, it became illegal to remember American history.

I'm not really sure why this man is remembered as anything other than the villain he was. Actually, I have a pretty good guess. Why is he remembered as "great"? Because he won a war. Right? Isn't that sort of the standard we have to assigning greatness to our leaders? Washington, Lincoln, and FDR are listed as our three greatest by nearly every single historian.

Why? Mostly because they were in charge during our three biggest wars. But Wilson was different. His war was different. World War I was not something the United States had to be involved in, unlike our 3 great wars. It was not something the American people largely wanted. It got 120,000 Americans killed. It accomplished nothing other than to guarantee World War II.

But here's the thing: we remember Wilson as great because his plan worked. We think he was great despite his tyranny because we have come to worship the state as he intended. We are jingoistic now, aggressive abroad but cowed and servile at home. We have given up the republic. The evidence is that we exalt the man who destroyed it.