Under the Espionage Act of 1917, opponents of World War I were
routinely prosecuted, and the Supreme Court routinely upheld their
convictions. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes rightly wrote, "When a
nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are
such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured
so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected
by any constitutional right." The Allies won World War I.
President
Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and allowed
governmental officials to arrest Rep. Clement Vallandigham after
Vallandigham called the Civil War "cruel" and "wicked," shut down
hundreds of opposition newspapers, and had members of the Maryland
legislature placed in prison to prevent Maryland's secession. The Union
won the Civil War.
During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the
internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans, as well as
allowing the prosecution and/or deportation of those who opposed the
war. The Allies won World War II.
During the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld the free
speech rights of war opponents, whether those opponents distributed
leaflets depicting the rape of the Statue of Liberty or wore jackets
emblazoned with the slogan "F--- the Draft." America lost the Vietnam
War.
Sen. John McCain is no conservative. He
opposed the Bush tax cuts. He sponsored the greatest lasting crackdown
on political speech in American history with campaign finance reform.
He allies himself with radical environmentalists. He's an open-borders
advocate on immigration. He voted against the constitutional amendment
to protect traditional marriage. He cobbled together the Senate's Gang
of 14, which stifled the appointment of strict constructionists to the
federal bench. His pro-life rhetoric is lukewarm at best.