Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [237]
The war in Vietnam, in the 1960s, was, or became, the most unpopular war in American history. There was a vast protest movement, and defiance of military and civilian authorities reached epidemic proportions. This was the first war since the Civil War in which countless thousands of young men tried to wriggle out of the draft, or defied it, or burned draft cards, or fled to Canada, or fathered babies, or went to school—anything not to serve. The administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon fought back, with propaganda and criminal justice. A fair number of draft-dodgers and draft-card burners went on trial, along with protesters who blocked induction centers, destroyed draft records, and otherwise interfered with the conduct of the war and the raising of armies.61
These trials reaped meager results. In some cases, defendants were acquitted; some judges handed out very light sentences. Some of the trials were blatantly political—often because of the antics of the defendants themselves. Usually, it was the government that wanted legalism and formalism; many defendants were only too eager to make guerrilla theater out of their trials. The “Catonsville Nine,” radical Catholics who had destroyed draft files, converted their trial—in Baltimore, in October 1968—into an inquisition on the war itself. They considered their trial “a victory of sorts,” even though they were convicted, because they had made publicity for their cause and evoked discussion about the meaning of the war.62
Political Justice Today
Throughout American history, there has never been a time without political crimes and political trials. Yet after the Vietnam War, a kind of lull set in. In the nineties, it would be hard to find solid, undisputed examples of American political prisoners. Few if any people are in jail for sedition, revolutionary propaganda, or similar crimes against the authority of the state. Of course, zealots with political motives who break the law do suffer the consequences; a person who lobs a firebomb at an abortion clinic, or trashes a laboratory in the name of animal rights, is committing a kind of political crime; but it is a crime, after all, to throw a firebomb at anything or anybody, or to trash a store, whatever the motive. Fringe leftists and radical rightists who hole up in the hills with stocks of heavy ammunition; KKK members who harass blacks; “Aryans” who paint swastikas on Jewish gravestones—these are all political criminals, but their crimes fall within the ordinary scope of the criminal code.
Has the state learned, at long last, to tolerate dissent? Hard to say. The state is an abstraction; government is made up of men and women. The FBI and CIA appear to have calmed down somewhat, lately; the Soviet Union has shattered into pieces; no major movements on the right or the left are agitating for radical change. At the moment, all seems calm. But nobody knows what would happen if crisis stretched the fabric of legitimacy. There are no reds to touch off a new red scare; but history is very inventive. Who knows what devil may be at work, this very moment, manufacturing new agents down below? Another unpopular war; a wave of race-hate crimes; ethnic unrest; riots in the cities; massive unemployment—new dangers are certainly thinkable. And in every period of danger there emerges a bogeyman, and perhaps some real enemies of the state.
Society has changed, of course, and in a particular way. American society recognizes—has been forced to recognize—diversity, multiplicity of cultures, religions, ways of life, habits, behaviors, points of view. This weakens the whole notion of sedition. Tolerance