Quote:

magicjay said:
What I mean is that the policy of containment of communism goes back to the days prior to and after the Bolshevik Revolution. That policy led to our initial support for fascist regimes in Europe because they opposed communism. The Republican admistrations in charge of the USA from 1921 - 1932 were isolationist. The Dems pushed our involvement in world affairs.



I understand and agree with your point, Magicjay, even before you gave clarification of what you mean.

Communism was certainly seen early on as a threat to the U.S., way before the nuclear age. Because communism under Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin was always ideologically stated as a movement not only for Russia, but to sweep across all the nations of the world.
Whether or not Russia had the ability to spread the revolution in those early years beyond their own borders.

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from The Story of America by John Garraty, pages 860-861:



Isolationism [in the U.S.] was an aspect of a larger postwar reaction. The Great War has been a great mistake, most people now thought... The world had certainly not been made safe for democracy, as Wilson had promised.

In 1919 most Americans seemed more worried about making the United States safe for themselves. Many seriously believed that a communist revolution might break out in the United States at any moment.
They were mindful that a tiny group of communists had taken over Russia in 1917. Now there were perhaps 70,000 communists (or Reds) in the United States.

Communists wanted workers to raise the red flag of revolution, take up arms, and destroy the capitalist system. At the same time anarchists, wanting all governments violently abolished, stirred up workers.

But most were simply trying to keep their jobs. Going from war to peace had been difficult for American industry. Without contracts for war supplies, many plants shut down temporarily or slowed their operations. Hundreds of thousands of wage-earners were thrown out of work. Soldiers returning to civilian life found it almost impossible to get jobs.

Many of the workers found their jobs had been filled by African-Americans who had moved from the South during the war to work in the factories. This added feul to racial tensions, that erupted into situations like the 1919 Chicago Race Riot.

As a result a wave of strikes spread over the land. At one time or another during 1919, 4 million workers were on strike.
Seattle was paralyzed.
In Boston the police walked off their jobs. Strikes by police were unheard of at that time. With the streets of Boston unprotected, looters began breaking into stores. The governor of Massachusetts, Calvin Coolidge, finally called in troops to restore order to the city.

At the same time, a series of bombings by terrorists took place. To this day, no one knows who was responsible for most of the bombings. But the tendency was to blame "the Reds".
A Big Red Scare swept over America.

President Woodrow Wilson's attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, became convinced that a massive communist plot was being organized to overthrow the U.S. federal government.
He ordered raids on the headquarters of suspected radical groups.

These Palmer Raids were often conducted without search warrants. Many suspected communists were held for weeks without formal charges. There was no evidence of a nationwide uprising.

Yet in 1921, Palmer announced that such a revolution would take place on May 1, the communist Labor Day. When May 1 passed by quietly, Americans realized that the danger of a revolution had only been in their minds. As quickly as it had begun, the Big Red Scare ended.

The nervous mood of the 1920's then took other forms. One was a revival of the Ku Klux Klan.

Klan membership grew between 1920 and 1923 from about 5000 members to several million.
Unlike the Klan of Reconstruction days, this one spread into the Northern States. It became a powerful but short-lived political and social force in the early 1920's and did much to harm many innocent people.




To give a sample of the issues of the times.

And it contrasts well how incredibly mild the Patriot Act is, compared to exertions of federal government power in past eras.