Dear George,
Quick! Hot flash Ashcroft! Tell him to get his nose out of the Bible and into a history book. Guidance is to be found in the past!
George! Do you realize what our democracy got away with during World War I? My God! Those people made the Patriot Act look like the Eleventh Amendment to the Bill of Rights!
Check this out! Your office scares people with the threat of terrorist attacks. That’s bush league, George. In 1915 the people were told that within sixteen days Germany was capable of landing 387,000 troops on the New Jersey shore. Now, that’s balls!
But, it gets even better. Two months after we entered the war, in June of 1917, congress passed the Espionage Act. This made a crime of any word, act or deed which could be judged as interfering with the national defense. Its vagueness sets the glands salivating. But they didn’t stop there. The Justice Department deputized citizens to question and hold for arrest any neighbors suspected of any act, word or deed that could interfere with the national defense. Before you could “goddamnlonghairhippy,” Justice had several hundred thousand snitches out looking for dissenters.
I’m sure your heart is racing by now. But hold on to your chair, because it gets kicked up a notch. In May, 1918, Congress passed the Sedition Act, which made it illegal to “utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language about the form of government in the United States.” Under this act, a Montana rancher got seven years for refusing to kiss the flag. Drool over that, George! If you had that act in your pocket and somebody said, “Bush is a numb-nutted idiot who needs both hands to wipe his ass,” you could throw him in jail.
The truth is that Woodrow Wilson only scratched the surface and never fully exploited the power a supine Congress gave him. Don’t you make that mistake. Here’s what you do. Ramrod similar acts through Congress (phony up a small explosion somewhere if you have to create the panicky paranoia that will facilitate its passage). The next time your Francophile opponent opens his mouth, lock his ass up. Then the victory lap is all yours. If it’s been done before, it can be done again. That’s what the eggheads mean when they say history repeats itself.
George, may your reign last a thousand years!
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
5:32:00 AM 
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