“In the U.S., World War I never had the social and cultural impact that it did in Germany and France.”
Yeah, except for hardening in concrete every nutty progressive idea Woodrow Wilson ever had. From the FBI, to our debased currency, to the national security state, etc. We encounter WWI every single day. WWI is where we stopped being anything resembling the America the founders gave us.
There still probably would have been something like the FBI even if Wilson had never been elected & we had never participated in WWI.
There was something like an American INTERPOL formed in 1896 called National Bureau of Criminal Identification. Formed originally by the National Police Chiefs Union so sort of a private organization! Originally in Chicago, Pinkerton shared his files with the organization. In 1902 it moved to Washington DC, where it functioned as a quasi-government agency that shared criminal ID information across state lines.
The McKinley assassination and assassination of government leaders - Empress Elizabeth of Austro-Hungary, the Italian PM, others in Europe pointed to a rising threat of anarchism, etc. The violence in the US labor movement all rightly or wrongly contributed to this fear. It was certainly international in scope as well as for the US interstate. It was strongly felt there was a need to coordinate LE & investigate at the national level. The FBI’s forerunner, the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) was created on July 26, 1908. First director was a guy named Stanley W. Finch. Its first official task was enforcing the Mann Act. It actually had to catalog “houses of prostitution” - I guess nation wide! (Now that would be a “Wild Wild West - James West/Artemis Gordon episode to write home about!). The two organizations were later merged. Then Wilson & WWI, Palmer Raids, etc., then Prohibition - the crime associated with it, the Osage murders, all drive the BOI to move from just doing investigations to full police powers - weapons & have arrest powers - i.e., the FBI.
Again I would have to say the desire for a national federal level police agency was already there due to the times & circumstances that originally had little to do with Wilson & WWI. I still think you would have ended up with some form of a federal police force.
Now I am NOT absolving Wilson of his arrogant progressive nuttiness. I just don’t think it applies here.
Yeah, I doubt that. If you think following Pierre Joseph Proudhon or Bakunin is somehow following the Founding Fathers, that’s where you’re wrong. Even Benjamin Franklin denounced the French Revolution and democracy as being “a couple of wolves debating a lamb regarding the supper menu.” And let’s face it, based on your remark promoting the Jacobins earlier, you probably would have preferred that America die by people slaughtering their neighbors September Massacres style for a sheer laugh.
Heck, Thomas Jefferson actually enacted loyalty oaths going by Christopher A. Ferrara, and may have rivaled Obama as a big government ogre. And don’t get me started on his cheerleading the Jacobins even while they were massacring everyone, while the other Founding Fathers were rightfully disgusted with it (heck, John Adams predicted from the start it would end very badly and he never even set foot in the country.). You might as well denounce the Founding Fathers for stopping America from resembling anything they gave us if we go by that train of thought.