Treason is the only crime specifically defined in the Constitution.
If you wage war against the United States, or help those who do, you can be charged with treason. To be convicted, two witnesses have to testify or you have to confess.
But that is just the law. The less formal view has been that traitors to America were pretty much the opposite of patriots. They were those who were against America and the ideals for which America stands. When I was a kid, Senator Joe McCarthy helped us out in identifying traitors:
Traitors are not gentlemen, my good friends. They don’t understand being treated like gentlemen.
Senator Joe McCarthy, March 17, 1954
The definition of treason had to do with defining the enemy of America. In those days it wasn’t hard.
The most easily defined enemy was seen as expansionist, with the ultimate goal of world domination. And so, secondary enemies were just as easy to define. The enemy of my enemy’s enemy was my enemy.
Communism was the enemy. Congressional investigators were the enemy of that enemy.
Those who objected to the tactics used by investigators were the enemy of the enemy’s enemy.
So, aside from not being gentlemen, traitors could be identified in other ways.
You are seeing today an all-out attempt to marshal the forces of the opposition, using not merely the Communists, but the fellow travelers, the deluded liberals, the eggheads, and some of my good friends on both the Democrat and Republican Party, who can become heroes overnight in the eyes of the left-wing press if they will join in the, join with the jackal pack.
So traitors included Communists, fellow travelers, liberals, and eggheads. Traitors were the enemies of patriots. Patriots like Joe McCarthy.
The disaster in Vietnam came from our view of communism. The conflict on the Indochina peninsula was seen as a proxy war.
If conflicts around the world were part of a grand scheme of evil devised and controlled from the Central Committee meeting room of the Kremlin, how could we not oppose them? How could we not become involved?
Some citizens noticed that Americans were fighting and dying in a foreign land, while not a single Russian commissar had had his whiskers singed. But questioning the wisdom of fighting that war was seen as siding with the enemy.
Treason.
More experts began to argue that not every conflict involving communists was about world domination, or even connected with Moscow. In this case, a pro-Catholic dictatorship was actively suppressing a Buddhist population. Challenging the strategic underpinnings of the Cold War was seen as challenging America itself.
Treason.
A phrase from many decades before came back into common use. I remember it from a famous movie about Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals before the Vietnam war became an American controversy. An attorney defends those who participated in mass killings ordered by Nazis.
The statement…
“My country, right or wrong…”
…was expressed by a great American patriot.
It is no less true for a German patriot.
Judgment at Nuremberg, 1961
Before Vietnam, the quote was a half-remembered, but more sensibly phrased, toast from 1872:
My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.
Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior, February 29, 1872
Anti-war protestors turned out to be right. Maybe they were patriots after all.
Today, treason seems to be in the process of another redefinition.
President Trump, talking with Mike Huckabee about a famous summit with North Korea:
Well, first of all we came to a wonderful agreement it’s a shame that the fake news covers it the way they do.
And the fake news media has been critical. Consider this coverage:
WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months — and that Kim Jong Un may try to hide those facilities as he seeks more concessions in nuclear talks with the Trump administration, U.S. officials told NBC News.
We shouldn’t be surprised that the President reacts to the trickery of Kim Jung Un.
…it’s a shame that the fake news covers it the way they do.
It’s, honestly, it’s really, it’s almost treasonous, you want to know the truth.
Determining who is guilty of treason really does require us to define the enemies of America. After Russia conspired with a few Americans to undermine our nation’s democracy, the Trump administration has imposed tariffs on one of our worst national enemies.
Russia.
Well, no.
I highlighted directly to the president that Canadians did not take it lightly that the United States has moved forward with significant tariffs on our steel and aluminum industry.
I particularly did not take lightly the fact that it’s based on a national security reason…
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada, June 9, 2018
That’s our national enemy? Canada?
…for Canadians, who either themselves or whose parents or community members have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with American soldiers in far off lands and conflicts from the First World War onwards, that it’s kind of insulting.
Okay, so it is kind of insulting to call anyone a national security threat when they fight and die alongside us in one war after another, when they are our friends for so many years. But Canada will be imposing tariffs on the United States, right? Well… that’s because the US imposed tariffs on Canada.
We declared a trade war, so they declared a trade war back at us. And the tone of that statement was so polite and mild, you would think they were talking about a friendly property line dispute in which one neighbor asks to the other to leave relatives out of it.
“It’s kind of insulting?” Those are the fighting words?
Hey!! That’s (pause) kind of insulting! So there!
It seems plain weird: Canada as a national enemy.
But we are in a trade war, right? They are imposing tariffs that will hurt American workers. So that makes them an enemy. Sort of, right?
Well, no. Turns out that wasn’t it. What made Canada the enemy was not the retaliation. It was not the tariffs. It wasn’t even the harm to US workers.
It was the press conference. That got to us directly from the mouth of President Trump’s special assistant on trade, Peter Navarro, who pretty much told us who told it to him.
…and that comes right from Air Force One.
Here’s what makes Canada our new enemy.
A special place in Hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door. And that’s what bad faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference.
A special place in Hell. It is true that Presidential Assistant Navarro took the special place in Hell part back. I guess Canadians will have to settle for plain old normal Hell.
Not for the tariffs. Not for harming American workers.
But this:
A special place in Hell
…for saying this:
…it’s kind of insulting…
…about who?
President Donald J. Trump
Oh Canada. How could you become our national enemy!
Before we over-react, let’s consider this. There is still a lot of distance between America’s government and accusing folks of treason because they don’t like one leader. In some countries they get accused for not applauding on cue.
They were like death. And UnAmerican, unAmerican. Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah! I guess! Why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.
That was Donald Trump talking about Congressional Representatives who did not applaud as he recited his accomplishments during the State of the Union address.
Okay, so we have a President who feels that foreign leaders who criticize him are national enemies, who talks about putting his own political opponents in jail, and who refers to any American who doesn’t like him as guilty of treason.
He still doesn’t have the power to force people to like him, to order us to sit up and applaud for him at the correct times, to control what the press tells us.
In short, he does not control the law.
From Fox News:
Breaking news: The White House has just released Justice Kennedy’s resignation letter.
Oh.
We are so screwed.
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Imagine how the Right would react if Hillary had won with the help of Russians, invited them into the Oval Office, and obstructed an investigation into their interference.
I’m sure the last word we’d hear from their raging fury would be “treason”.
I’m reading Jon Meacham’s “Soul of America” for comfort in these dark times. So far, it hasn’t helped. We’ve regressed from a Senator McCarthy, to Nixon, to Cheney, to a Trump.
Democracy’s door was shut in 2000. The light of America went out in 2004 by the re-electing a man who lied us into war. A financial crisis in 2008 opened a few eyes to seek light.
In 2016 the darkness triumphed.