Nineteen ninety-eight is the 200th anniversary of an event that I trust no one will care to celebrate: the Sedition Act of 1798, the single most egregious violation of freedom of speech in American history. Less than a decade after the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the Sedition Act made it a crime to defame President John Adams or the Congress, which was then in the hands of the Federalists. The Adams administration used the law to imprison most of the editors of the major opposition (Jeffersonian Republican) newspapers. Nothing in American history, not even McCarthyism, comes close in the scale of political repression, and thankfully nothing like it is on the horizon.

Like Woodrow Wilson during World War I, George W. Bush has held out the promise that by going to war, America can make the world safe for democracy. Once Saddam Hussein is ousted, we can turn Iraq into a political and economic model for the Arab world, addressing the causes of terrorism at their roots. Some liberals who support the war are attracted by this vision -- and indeed it has its attractions. But just as the outcome of World War I dashed the hopes of pro-war progressives and set the stage for an even more terrible conflict, so war in Iraq may bring not just disappointment but further cycles of bloodshed.