Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent by Dr. Ernest Freeberg. If you’re read any of my economic posts via this blog or my separate blog that I set up specifically for economic posts (enotesfromvivace), you probably know that I’m not one who supports socialism. However, I was at the LA Times Festival of Books in 2010 and was at a panel discussion where Freeberg was discussion his book about Eugene V. Debs. Freeberg sounded interested and the discussion regarding Eugene V. Debs sounded interesting, as well. So I bought this book and, yes, it sat on my bookshelf for awhile.
So what did I think about the book? No matter if you’re a socialist or not, one would find this book fascinating. Though the book doesn’t go through the history of how we’ve gained greater freedoms in this country, it does focus on a turning point where we gained greater freedoms to protest. I’m not going to say that Eugene V. Debs and others spearheaded (given all the credit) free speech rights for Vietnam/Iraq protestors. Times change and I’m sure the rights of free speech would have expanded even without Eugene V. Debs, but this book explores brilliantly how at that moment in time free speech rights expanded.
Though this book casts a very favorable light on Debs, it also makes some critical points such as the fact that he was very supportive of Lenin – though admittedly as Lenin’s actions in Russian became better known, Debs back off of his support.
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