" 

 I just noticed that you protected Gamaliel's version of the article, how nice of you. It truly is good to see fair and impartial admins on Wikipedia, you know? But dont fret, someone is going to get burned.  

 ==Smith Act Source== 

 Well, I have done it, an easily accesable source for the Smith quote, that I think everone can agree is gen-u-ine good.  

 *A similar ideological-emotional construction is apparent in the position Robeson took on the civil liberties of the Trotskyst Social Workers Party. At a Bill of Rights Conference in New York City in late July of 1949m a resolution was introduced calling for freedom for eighteen Trotskites convicted in 1941 under the same provisions of the Smith Act currently being used against the leaders of the CPUSA. The chairman of the conference, Paul J. Kern, argued forcefully before the convention that free speech should never be denied because of a difference in political opinion-a view seconded by Professor Thomas Emerson of the Yale Law School. An impassioned Robeson took the platform to denounce the Kern-Emerson position. Like most pro-Soviets, Robeson had long blamed the followers of Trotsky for spreading exaggerated “slander” about Stalin’s “police sate”. Adherents of the Socialist Workers Party, Robeson claimed, “are the allies of Fascism who want to destroy the new democracies of the world. Let’s not get confused, They are the enemies of the working class. Would you give civil rights to the Ku Klux Klan?” NO, the delegates roared back. They defeated the resolution and passed a substitute that simply called for the defense of “all anti-fascist victims” of the Smith Act. It was not Robeson’s finest hour.  

 Paul Robeson: A Biography 
 by Martin Duberman page 382 
 footnote 3, page 699 The New York Times, July 19th 1949, National Gaurdian July 25th 1949 

  

 Not his finest hour indeed, or yours Viajero, or yours Gamaliel. Indeed .... indeed! 

 I might also go onto mention that one of the 12 SWP members was James Kutcher, a SWP member who had lost both his legs at Anzio in 1944.  

 ""The Case of the Legless Veteran,"" Dissent, Winter 1986 Harvey Klehr,  does touch on this, but this is so much better a source.  

 Time to unprotect this and gimme my props! "