In the Spring of 1935, as the world slipped deeper and deeper into the muck of the Great Depression, journalist Cedric Fowler noticed that both governments state and Federal were introducing legislation that was designed to muzzle free-speech and make the deportation of foreign radicals far easier:
“These things are symptoms of of an underlying complaint. The present campaigns against thought and opinion simply attacks the complaint at its surface appearance, as though a doctor were to prohibit a fever-ridden patient from showing a temperature… Most of Europe and all of Asia is already in the grasp of a paralysis of censorship and repression. The first wave of reaction has reached the United States. Europe and Asia, as the outcome of the new tyranny, are shaking on the edge of revolution and war. Are we preparing ourselves for a similar destiny?”
