discusses how people’s perception of time affects their ideas of war. Dudziak clearly explains how the concept of wartime has influenced American politics. She suggests that government officials have employed the idea of a “wartime frame” to justify the expansion of government power by reassuring the public that wartime is temporary. Dudziak argues that there is no end in sight to the American military activity that is taking place across the world and the concept of “wartime” and “peacetime” are no longer applicable. Furthermore, she argues that Americans are now living in a constant wartime with lessened rights and liberties. Throughout the book Dudziak relied primarily on legal cases to support her arguments. Among the other…show more content… Dudziak started by challenging the long held perception of Americans that World War II started with the attack on Pearl Harbor and ended with the surrender of Japan. Dudziak stated that “World War II is thought of as having obvious starting and ending points”(35). Dudziak worked to remind the readers that World War II, the most iconic war in time, had a murky beginning and end “fuzzier around the edges than we usually imagine” (62). Dudziak suggests that fuzzy wartime, because of its fuzziness, is more open to partisan conflict in which national security concerns are mobilized to divide rather than unify the country. Furthermore, Dudziak used the Cold War as an example to support her thesis. Dudziak is unable to reach a conclusion about whether the Cold War was a war (72–76). The ambiguous status of the Cold War led to contractions of civil liberties in the 1950s when the conflict was at its height. She used the following examples, the red-baiting of McCarthyism and the prosecution of individuals under the Smith Act (78) as evidence for the tightening of American rights and liberties at the time. Dudziak noted the Cold War was a low point for First Amendment protections
