Compare And Contrast Espionage And Sedition Acts

As the United States was just becoming involved in the First World War, fatal circumstances began to occur not only with other countries, but within the U.S. itself. When domestic and foreign spies began to appear inside the United States, law enforcements became much stricter, and new acts/laws began to develop. Of these laws and acts, two of the greatest were the Espionage and Sedition Acts. The Espionage Act was mainly to prevent U.S citizens attempting to harm the United States by spying and aiding other countries in the war, whereas the Sedition Act had labeled disloyalty, profane, and abusive language against the Constitution, the U.S. government, the American uniform, or the flag a federal offense. These two acts significantly impacted Eugene Debs, Edward Snowden, and Bradley Manning, because it limited their level of open opinion. Each man’s case related to either freedom of speech or the verbal abuse of the United States, both of which were prohibited under the Espionage and Sedition Acts. Although these two acts were created to protect the United States from great harm during World War I, they were unjust because they were severely violating the first amendment, or the freedom of speech.
These two acts were utterly unjust due to the fact that they did not allow the freedom of speech of the public. Eugene Debs should have never been arrested for speaking his mind about the war because every citizen of the United States is, or should have been fully entitled to his or her own opinion on anything whether it is a positive or negative point of view. The Espionage and Sedition Acts clearly contradict the United States Constitution’s First Amendment, the public’s freedom of