Chapter 20 Critical Thinking #3

I do believe that the U.S.'s fear of radicals was justified, but some of it was simply overreaction, with harmful results for the country. The Bolsheviks were a very small number of people in a very large country, but somehow they managed to overthrow the government of Russia and establish communism as Russia's (or the Soviet Union's) system of government. The leaders of the Soviet Union wanted to spread communist revolution to the world and to abolish capitalism, the U.S.'s system of government. Soon afterwards, the U.S. communist party was established with 70,000 members, and people feared that these people, though relatively small, would overthrow the U.S.governemnt like what happened in Russia. Bombs were mailed to U.S. government officials, fueling the panic. These are all legitimate reasons for concern, but some reactions were harmful to the country and over-the-top. The popularity of the KKK surged, with 4.5 million members in the mid-twenties, and anti-immigrants sentiment went way up, as seen with the passing of the Emergency Quota Act of 1920, which limited the number of immigrants coming in from Europe hugely. The Palmer Raids, another result of the the fear of communism, trampled people's civil rights. There was cause for fear, but the overreactions of the country were damaging to its reputation with European countries from which immigrants were discriminated against.