Now, obviously, none of the current crop of self-described progressives are eager to replay this dark chapter.

I think you're wrong; I think a bunch of them would LOVE to have this power, and they'd use it. 

Under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, Wilson's administration shut down newspapers and magazines at an astounding pace. Indeed, any criticism of the government, even in your own home, could earn you a prison sentence. One man was brought to trial for explaining in his own home why he didn't want to buy Liberty Bonds.

The Wilson administration sanctioned what could be called an American fascisti, the American Protective League. The APL – a quarter million strong at its height, with offices in 600 cities – carried government-issued badges while beating up dissidents and protesters and conducting warrantless searches and interrogations. Even after the war, Wilson refused to release the last of America's political prisoners, leaving it to subsequent Republican administrations to free the anti-war Socialist Eugene V. Debs and others.
Sounds an awful lot like the black block protesters, doesn't it?  And the "Your words assault me!" apologists for them.


Guy, you only think what's been thrown at you before was bad; I think you're about to catch a shitstorm of monumental proportions.
And I began to realize that maybe my opinions just didn’t fit in with the liberal status quo, which seems to mean that you must absolutely hate Trump, his supporters and everything they believe. If you dare not to protest or boycott Trump, you are a traitor.
If you dare to question liberal stances or make an effort toward understanding why conservatives think the way they do, you are a traitor.

It can seem like liberals are actually against free speech if it fails to conform with the way they think. And I don’t want to be a part of that club anymore.


And how many of his illegal-alien relatives have been voting illegally, I wonder?


Just in case you hadn't heard of it, this is why I tend to look askance(at the least) when some CAIR stooge starts yelling about how harmless and fuzzy they are..