Hoover

As we descend into a national surveillance state it’s helpful to remember that we’ve been here before. From the Alien and Sedition Acts of John Adams through the first Red Scare to the second Red Scare to our current fear of terrorism and immigrants paranoia is a signal, if largely unnoted, aspect of our country.

Kenneth D. Ackerman looks at the first Red Scare and finds a monster being born:

John Edgar Hoover kept his desk clean, it’s glass-covered mahogany surface polished, and he gave everything he touched a sense of order.

Neat. Orderly. Hoover wanted the United States to be just like him. (Would it be going too far to compare Hoover to Adolph Eichmann? Maybe. But both sought to make the trains run on time. Let's call it a difference of degree.)

John Edgar quickly learned the ways of power. This is the point: Nobody gave Hoover power, he created it on his own.

Ackerman recounts:

They chose to send a message...they came armed with clubs, police backup, and over two hundred Labor Department deportation warrants naming the leaders of the Union of Russian Workers….

The Department of Justice as well as courts at all levels handed out warrants like candy. The focus was immigrants.

Is there another John Edgar Hoover in our government today? No.

We’ve become a more subtle people. We allow ourselves to be violated by degrees.

This is how today’s John Edgar Hoover prefers it.

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