Woodrow Wilson or Franklin D. Roosevelt: which president was worse for free speech?

In August, FIRE posted a viral X thread, arguing that Woodrow Wilson may be America’s worst-ever president for free speech. Despite the growing recognition of Wilson’s censorship, there was a professor who wrote a recent book on FDR’s free speech record, arguing that FDR was worse. 

Representing the Wilson side in our discussion is Christopher Cox, author of the new book, “Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn.” Cox is a former member of the House of Representatives, where he served for 17 years, including as chair of the Homeland Security Committee. He is currently a senior scholar in residence at the University of California, Irvine. 

Representing the FDR side is professor David T. Beito, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama. He is the author of a number of books, his latest being “The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance.”

Read the transcript.

Timestamps: 

00:00 Intro

03:41 Wilson’s free speech record

15:13 Was FDR’s record worse than Wilson’s?

24:01 Japanese internment

29:35 Wilson at the end of his presidency

37:42 FDR and Hugo Black

42:31 The Smith Act

45:42 Did Wilson regret his actions?

50:31 The suffragists

56:19 Did FDR regret his actions?

01:02:04 Outro

Show notes:

• Espionage Act of 1917

• Sedition Act of 1918

• Executive Order (creating the Committee on Public Information)

• Schenk v. United States (1919)

• Abrams v. United States (1919)

• Smith Act of 1940

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech (1941)

• The Lend-Lease Program (1941-1945)