The Secret Police

This new assignment got me thinking- when would I, if ever, limit free speech? At first I couldn't ever come up with a situation of why it would be necessary, but when I talked to my parents about this, I realized that there are a couple of cases where I would limit free speech. To me, it depends on what type of war we fight. Three out of the last four wars we have fought (Terrorism, Vietnam, Korea) we have fought against ideals, governments, and rebellions, but no clear-cut country. In the Gulf War, we clearly fought against Iraq and pushed them out of Kuwait. When we have fought against a clear-cut country, we (the people of the U.S.) have come together and rarely spoke directly against the war at hand, but when we fought against an organization or a government (Communism), we have spoken out against out government's actions with impunity. I agree with the majority of the U.S. citizens on this matter. I believe that if I was president and we got in a war with an actual country, I'd put limits on our civil liberties so that our morale could be helped and so that we could focus on the war. However, if I was in this type of "Ghost Hunt" war where we are fighting an organization, I wouldn't limit civil liberties, unless the public, congress, and the Supreme Court thought that it would be in this county's best interest to do so. However, in the end, I believe that governments take turns being legitimately free, and then being a police state. Look at Russia, for example, the Czar system, though a hard system, was decently free. However, when it was taken over and turned Communist, a police state took over, until 1991 when a free government took over Russia again.