In Time of War by Adam J. Berinsky;

Author:Adam J. Berinsky;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 7.7. Support for civil liberties, 1938–45.

The individual-level determinants of civil liberties judgments are also similar in many respects to those found both during times of peace and in the crisis of the first decade of the twenty-first century. For instance, the effect of threat follows a familiar pattern. Although there are no consistent individual-level indicators of threat, two surveys taken a year apart before the United States’ entry into the war asked, “Do you think that Axis will attack us if Britain is defeated?” Although this measure does not tap the “worry” dimension of the current questions, it can serve as a rough, albeit imperfect, proxy for sociotropic threat. In July 1940, among those respondents who expressed an opinion, 62 percent believed the Axis would attack the United States. By July 1941 this figure had risen to 73 percent. More important, as in the present day, those respondents who felt threatened by the Axis were more supportive of restricting civil liberties than were respondents who did not feel threatened. In July 1940 respondents who believed the Axis countries would attack the United States were 4 percent more likely to support free speech restrictions than were respondents who did not feel so threatened. In July 1941, feelings of threat reduced support for free speech by 8 percent.46 On the other hand, as during the Vietnam War, partisanship did not have the impact on civil liberties judgments it does in the present day. Although supporters of FDR were less supportive of protecting civil liberties than were his opponents during the war years, these differences were small. Furthermore, much of the partisan difference can be accounted for by controlling for education level—a factor that was associated with both increased support for civil liberties and the tendency to vote for Republican candidates in this era. Moreover, the unification of opinion behind the war after the United States’ entry in 1941 did not alter the partisan balance of opinion on civil liberties. Interestingly, then, it appears that support for civil liberties judgments did not follow the paths of partisan polarization that infected opinion about the war.

Returning to familiar patterns, however, I find that the relationship between support for war and restrictions on civil liberties in the period before the United States’ entry into the war also mirrored that of the post 9/11 era. Figure 7.8 presents the effect of war support on intolerance for four polls taken from November 1940 to July 1941. In all cases, those most supportive of increased U.S. involvement were more supportive of restricting speech. This relationship holds both for questions that relate to tolerance toward specific groups and for more general questions relating to free speech.

Once the United States entered the war, not only did support for free speech increase, but contrary to the findings from the present day, the effect of war support on levels of free speech seems to have faded as well. As was the case in chapters 4 and 5, I am limited in my analysis of the effects of war support by the nature of the data.

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