Question

excerpt adapted from Address to the Jury
by Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman was a well-known anarchist, meaning someone who believed voluntary organizations should replace governments. In 1917, Goldman and fellow anarchist Alexander Berkman were put on trial for conspiring against the US government by publishing anarchist magazines. In the following speech, Goldman defends herself and Berkman.

The stage having been appropriately set for the three-act comedy, and the first act successfully played by carrying off the villains in a madly dashing automobile—which broke every traffic regulation and barely escaped crushing everyone in its way—the second act proved even more ludicrous. Fifty thousand dollars bail was demanded, and real estate refused when offered by a man whose property is valued at three hundred thousand dollars--and that after the District Attorney had . . . promised to accept the property for one of the defendants, Alexander Berkman, thus breaking every right guaranteed even to the most heinous criminal.

Finally, the third act, played by the Government in this court during the last week. The pity of it is that the prosecution knows so little of dramatic construction, otherwise it would have equipped itself with better dramatic material to sustain the continuity of the play. As it was, the third act fell flat, utterly, and presents the question, Why such a tempest in a teapot?

Gentlemen of the jury, my comrade and co-defendant having carefully and thoroughly gone into the evidence presented by the prosecution, and having demonstrated its entire failure to prove the charge of conspiracy or any overt acts to carry out that conspiracy1, I shall not impose upon your patience by going over the same ground, except to emphasize a few points. To charge people with having conspired to do something which they have been engaged in doing most of their lives—namely their campaign against war, militarism and conscription2 as contrary to the best interests of humanity--is an insult to human intelligence.

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1 These were the formal charges against Goldman and Berkman.
2 Militarism is the glorification of the military in society; conscription is the draft.

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Answer 1

an idiom — "tempest in a teapot" is a figurative expression meaning much ado about nothing (a big fuss over a small matter).