During the past few weeks of American Studies class we have been putting quite a lot of emphasis on the espionage and sedition acts and the affect they had on the expression of free speech and the overall freedom of citizens in America during the early 1900s. The original purpose of the espionage and sedition acts were to safeguard national security and opinion in the tension of the first world war, but instead these laws made the government able to restrict free speech and freedom of expression. Firstly, the espionage act of 1917 made it illegal for any U.S. citizen to interfere negatively with the American government or military, making it very difficult to oppose unwanted actions of the military during the war. Furthermore, the addition of the sedition act in 1918 made it illegal for any U.S. citizen to publicly oppose or rebel against the American government/military. In other words, the government now prohibited the free expression of beliefs that it did not deem safe or beneficial to national security. This expelled the first amendment of the Constitution regarding the right of every citizen to freedom of speech and created a controversy on the righteousness of the American government because the U.S. was now able to prosecute anyone that they disagreed with. In the period of the espionage and sedition acts, the government prosecuted many socialists, anarchists, communists and other people of radical beliefs, preventing the possibility of America evolving or changing into something other than the America that the government wanted.
My interpretation of the espionage and the sedition acts and their application shed the American government in a very negative light, but personally, I think that it is justified because with the enactment of these acts I think the government plainly abused their power and restricted people from benefiting from one of the supposed core American beliefs: freedom.
