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DISSENT OR TREASON?

 

Our sewers are yet again spewing the rant of anti-American Leftists. It was bad enough in the Sixties and Seventies when the America-haters crippled our efforts to defend South Viet Nam. Now they are at it again. Only one example of literally hundreds: six days after the slaughter of thousands of innocent Americans, the Left, its fellow travelers, and its dupes, held a "teach-in" at the University of North Carolina billed as "Understanding the Attack on America: an Alternate View." That "view" is that "we deserved what we got." Why? Because — and this is a clear implication of their "alternate" view — of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, our democracy, our capitalist economic system, our Western values, our having saved the world at least twice in the past hundred years. In short, America deserved to be attacked by terrorists because America is America.

Much is being said, and can be said, about this obscene view and those that entertain it. But what has not yet been noted about what the America-haters are saying is the free speech implication and its relationship to the law of treason.

The fact is that the America-haters, no matter how malevolent and odious their motives and words, are exercising a right recognized and protected by the Constitution of the United States of America — a right neither recognized nor protected by the regimes the America-haters apparently revere. A right, when exercised, which those regimes respond to with prison and often death.

But there is another point here. Understandably, as many Americans hear the rant of this small minority of their fellow citizens, there are (and increasingly will be) cries of "treason." If meant literally, this charge paints with too broad a brush.

There are three crimes expressly mentioned in the Constitution, only one of which is actually defined. Article I, Section 8, gives Congress power to punish counterfeiting, and to define and punish piracy; neither is actually defined. However, Article III, Section 3, provides that: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

As we explain in our forthcoming book "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Viet Nam (see www.Hanoijane.net), the Supreme Court of the United States, has interpreted the treason section to require four elements for indictment and conviction: (1) an intent to betray the United States, (2) an overt act, (3) proved by two witnesses, (4) providing aid and comfort." In Fonda’s case, she traveled to North Viet Nam during hostilities, made broadcasts (tapes of which were relentlessly played to our POWs), held press conferences, provided photo ops for the Communists, attacked the United States, exploited American prisoners of war, fraternized with North Vietnamese military and civilian leaders — and was thanked for her efforts by Communist leaders. This is why "Aid and Comfort" concludes that, given the law of treason and given Fonda’s conduct, there was more than sufficient evidence to support an indictment and conviction for treason.

Not so for today’s America-haters. So far at least, all they have done is speak. The essential elements for the Constitutional crime of treason are not there. Only those who arguably cross that line and commit overt acts with an intent to betray the United States by giving aid and comfort to our enemies fit within the constitutional definition of treason.

For those who dare to cross this line, we must heed the words just written by David Horowitz in his "Open Letter to ‘Anti-War’ Demonstrators": " If I have one regret from my radical years, it is that this country was too tolerant towards the treason of its enemies within. If patriotic Americans had been more vigilant in the defense of their country, if they had called things by their right names, if they had confronted us with the seriousness of our attacks, they might have caught the attention of those of us who were well-meaning, if utterly misguided. And they might have stopped us in our tracks."

To this, we would add words written five hundred years ago: "Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

Not yet.