A puzzling question for a Democracy

[cthulu2016]

In World War I there was a draft. A big one.

A lot of men in the Civil war and WWI and WWII were eager to get into the fight. But not nearly enough. Our national mythology glosses over the fact that men had to be legally compelled to serve in even the "good" wars.

In World War I the draft was a controversial policy, as a draft often is. There was a lot of rabble-rousing in some quarters, telling workers to resist the draft.

So, in order to make the draft more effective, it was a crime to speak against the draft.

One of the past and future candidates for president, Socialist Eugene Debs, leader of the third largest party in the USA, had a policy platform of eliminating the draft when he became president because he thought the draft was a bad thing. In arguing why there should not be a draft, one tends to put forward arguments that the draft is stupid, or immoral, or illegal, or otherwise sucks.

He got millions of votes, all write-ins (!) while in prison for speaking against the draft.

He tried to craft his speeches to not directly urge criminal action, but that was not enough for the Supreme Court.

While Debs had carefully worded his speeches in an attempt to comply with the Espionage Act, the Court found he had the intention and effect of obstructing the draft and military recruitment. Among other things, the Court cited Debs' praise for those imprisoned for obstructing the draft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs#Arrest_and_imprisonment

This is an interesting sort of Chinese finger-trap for democracy... how could a law be changed if the law also makes it illegal to argue effectively for changing it?

[font color=gray]This OP is not a piggy-back on any other discussion of sedition and not offered to equate anything to anything. It is an interesting philosophical question in its own right.[/font color]

[cthulu2016]

1. .

[RC]

2. You post does not show the people of the US as war mongering as some would like.

Also everbody knows laws like you described would never happen in the greatest county the world has ever known.
Never mind the actual truth of really being a dictatorship under the guise of a republic where the people think they actually have a say in how things are run, once they get past the rigged elections. When was the last time anyone actually voted for their preferred candidate, over the one selected for them in the back room? Think about that, before you answer.

So much bad stuff can't happen here, but for the fact that it did.