Kudos to [tag]Montana[/tag] Gov. [tag]Brian Schweitzer[/tag] (D) for these [tag]pardons[/tag], but it’s tragic that they were necessary.
Before a packed crowd in the state Capitol, Gov. Brian Schweitzer signed pardons on Wednesday to clear the names posthumously of 78 Montanans convicted of [tag]sedition[/tag] during World War One.
The 78 people — all but one were men — were arrested and convicted of violating a restrictive state Sedition Act for criticizing the U.S. role in World War One or for refusing to buy war bonds. Some of the people, many of whom were immigrants, expressed support for Germany in the war.
Critics, including Democrat Schweitzer, said those laws trampled the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution.
“Across this country, it was a time in which we had lost our minds,” the governor said. “So today in Montana, we will attempt to make it right. In Montana, we will say to an entire generation of people, we are sorry. And we challenge the rest of the country to do the same.”
Montana took the “lead” in 1918, passing a Sedition Act and creating a Montana Council of Defense, which banned the use of the German language, even in churches, and barred a number of books about Germany. “Third-degree committees” were formed to identify those who did not buy war bonds. The efforts helped inspire the Federal Sedition Act of 1918.
As the NYT noted, there was one instance in which a traveling wine and brandy salesman was sentenced to 7 to 20 years in prison for calling wartime food regulations a “big joke.” For that matter, 12 children were put up for adoption when their family farm failed due to the imprisonment of their father.
Clemens P. Work, director of graduate studies at the University of Montana School of Journalism, spurred the state into action with a book chronicling the sedition era and highlighting the affected families. Work said he sees some parallels between 1918 and 2001.
Mr. Work, who was conducting research for the book when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred, said he had found the similarities between 2001 and 1918 to be eerie.
“The hair on the back of my neck stood up,” Mr. Work said. “The rhetoric was so similar, from the demonization of the enemy to saying ‘either you’re with us or against us’ to the hasty passage of laws.”
Obviously, no Americans face state-sanctioned punishment for criticizing the government, but I often wonder if, decades from now, people will look at the Bush era as “a time in which we had lost our minds.”