Mar 23, 2006

Garet Garrett as Wilsonian Witch Hunter

by Liberty and Power

Since I first read The People's Pottage in my teens, Garet Garrett has always been one of my heroes. For decades, he fought a lonely battle (often at great personal cost) against the emerging national security state. For this reason, it was quite a stunner to read the following the other day in David Nasaw's The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst:

In the fall of 1918, Garet Garrett, an assistant editor of the [New York] Tribune, prepared a brief charging Hearst with treason under the Espionage Act of 1917 and traveled to Washington, D.C., to outline his case to Attorney General Thomas Gregory. In October, a federal grand jury sitting in New York City interviewed Garrett and subpoenaed a copy of his brief. While Garrett insisted that he had 'evidence tending to shown treasonable activities' on Hearst's part, he was unable to produce any. The case against Hearst was dropped. Still the suspicions lingered.

Through it all, Hearst did very little to defend himself. Convinced that he had been in correct in opposing American entry into the war and thereafter to urge a negotiated peace, he was not about to surrender his right to speak his mind to his readers.

Fortunately, Garrett more than made up for this serious lapse in the decades to follow. Perhaps his ultimate redemption illustrates that there is hope even for the likes of George Bush....well probably not.

More Comments:

Robert Higgs - 3/23/2006

Even in his later life, however, Garrett's quarrels with the New Deal and with other anti-liberal nonsense often seem to boil down to a claim that the policies or practices he opposes are not the American way.

Although we are often tempted to use similar arguments when defending liberty--the Founding Fathers would be appalled, etc., etc.--this sort of argument, especially if it forms the foundation of one's protest, is always unfortunate.

What the (classical)liberal ought to defend is always liberty. We Americans have no patent on liberty; many others have defended it in many other places. And sad to say, Americans have themselves often acted as liberty's worst enemies.

After all, who has largely destroyed the liberties that once existed in this country? Not red-skinned savages, not yellow peril, not wetbacks, not huddled masses yearning to breath free. All in all, liberty's most effective enemies in this country have always been those WASPs and others who made the loudest noises about their 100 % Americanism.