On Suppressing the Advocacy of Crime [excerpt]

     After the assassination of President McKinley [27][28] a newspaper reporter attempted to get an interview with a United States Senator, who had had some personal differences with the President. The Senator declined to be interviewed saying that because of his past personal differences he would have nothing to say. For exercising his freedom of speech by simply announcing that he had nothing to say, a large number of United States Senators, I think it was a majority, sent telegrams to a Southern paper, declaring their willingness to vote for his expulsion from the United States Senate. Here there was not even the excuse that the Senator’s offending silence promoted crime, and it is a most glaring illustration of the instability of freedom, even with the most dignified, and, presumably, the most enlightened body of men that can be gathered in the United States. It is sad to contemplate how slender is the thread whose severance terminates our liberties.
     Under the influence of that same unreason and epidemic of hysteria, ingeniously developed to the highest pitch of excitement by our conscienceless press, came into existence that multiplicity of state and national laws, directed against the mere abstract opinions entertained by people calling themselves Anarchists. All this came in spite of the fact that there was no evidence whatever that Czolgosz was an Anarchist. However, the word Anarchist was an effective epithet, and, hereafter all those to whom it could be even metaphorically applied must be denied their freedom of speech and of press, no matter how harmless or justifiable might be their political creed.