Blog #9: The Progressive Era

 Antiwar is when you are against war or a particular war. So how come we never hear or see anything antiwar related? Below is some of my opinions and observations on why this is common in today's society: 

Antiwar voices have been around for quite a while. In 1964, opposition to the United States involvement in the Vietnam War began to spread. World War II was common to see as antiwar, as Americans did not want to see a repeat of the first world war. When looking at the timeline we built in class, 1917 and 1918, the Espionage Act and Sedition Act both punishe antiwar voices. This brings me back to my second EOTO topic, whistleblowers. Whistleblowers release hidden information by the government to the public. Whistleblowers just want the truth to be shown and not have secrets hidden from us, but the government considers this a violation of the Espionage Act. I think the reason the government tends to silence these voices is because it's all about power for them. By not knowing every piece of information that's happening around the world and only being shown what they want us to see or know gives the government the upper hand over citizens. The First Amendment gives us the right to freedom of speech and the right to petition the government, so why are we being silenced? 

Before this class, I had never heard of the two websites Antiwar.com and The American Conservative. I was stunned to know that there are websites like this out there, but yet no attention is paid to them. Looking at the Antiwar website, there are many news stories that are not being covered on regular news streams. For example, an article from April 24th is labeled, Students ridicule NYU "wall of shame" as nationwide Palestine protests reach Harvard. Instead, our main news streams are constantly giving us news on the Supreme Court and former President Donald Trump's trail. It's a shame that if we want to hear strong antiwar voices, we have to go down a rabbit hole when searching for this information. I feel like information like this should be easily accessible instead of only having access to limited information.