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Let’s Talk ‘Treason’
Treason is one of the few crimes specifically mentioned in our Constitution. And the courts have been very specific in what constitutes the offense. In Cramer v US the 5-4 majority declared:
A citizen intellectually or emotionally may favor the enemy and harbor sympathies or convictions disloyal to this country’s policy or interest, but, so long as he commits no act of aid and comfort to the enemy, there is no treason. On the other hand, a citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy—making a speech critical of the government or opposing its measures, profiteering, striking in defense plants or essential work, and the hundred other things which impair our cohesion and diminish our strength—but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason.
And that was written in 1945 when the United States was operating under the last full-blown Congressional declaration of war. Today a sitting United States senator accused a former Congresswoman and current Lt. Colonel of the United States Army Reserve of treason. And people cheered.
I hold no special regard for Ms. Gabbard. She’s a Democrat and I think some of her ideas are absurd. But I have no need to insist that any policy difference I have with her meets any definition of “treason,” let alone the Constitutional one.
And while I also hate the “chicken hawk” trope, the end of the military draft in this country has created a huge divide where those who rattle the loudest sabers and advocate for war are the ones whose children are the most unlikely to be asked to bear the burden.
The Romneys are an especially large family and an “Army of None.” Daddy George, who was 34 at the time of Pearl Harbor, didn’t enlist. Mittens got four deferments during Vietnam. Older brother Scott avoided it, too. None of his children have served.
Nor has his peanut gallery of supporters. (As an aside I will give the Kristol family props here. Bill’s son Joe was a USMC infantry officer in Afghanistan from September 2010 to April 2011.) It’s only us lowly “proles” who offer up our children for their hubris. And I’m sick of it.
I’m also sick of politicians who tell me Ukraine’s borders are inviolable to the tune of $13.6B but not a dime for our own southern border. In 2016 Jimmy Carter’s pollster, Patrick Caddell, declared that the United States was in a “pre-revolutionary” state. If someone doesn’t get their act together soon the revolution will come. And it won’t be pretty. Then we can talk about the real meaning of treason.
Published in General
Be careful. I seem to remember some guy recently who pointed this out and they impeached him for it.
Perhaps you should read his profiles of and interviews with dissidents and those imprisoned under the ChiComs, Sandinistas, etc. He’s done a lot of other writing in this vein, but that’s what pops into my mind first.
I get that Trump broke him to a certain extent, but that doesn’t make his other work and writings invalid.
That tells me he’s too finnicky for the fight. Anybody can rack up an impressive list of Op-Eds. I share Drew’s experience and his opinion. The Mitt Romney wing of the Nothing Party can go restructure itself.
That’s how I feel when people keep trying to defend Jonah Goldberg’s madness “because he wrote a book 20 years ago that was really good . . .”
Twenty years ago.
People grow in all kinds of ways as they get older, not all of them positively.
He still writes of and works behind the scenes for political prisoners and organizations helping them. Which is a good thing to do, as far as I’m concerned. Not everything or everyone is perfect. Take the good where you can find it and leave the rest.
What I’ve found is not good. So I’ll leave it.
Yup. I have that book. LOVED IT. I just located it on the bookshelf (many of the cubbies in my shelf-thing are double-parked, so there’s always an element of mystery), and I can see the little mustache right now. I could thump the thing if I weren’t afraid that the wraith of John McCain might jump out and start shouting at me about Hobbits and Mordor. Screw the lot of them.
The Tea Party is the Trump Party, and we remember how these people treated and defeated us repeatedly. We weren’t born yesterday, and don’t need our betters to explain civility to us in the boxcar through the long journey to the camps. We’ve read Solzhenitsyn and we used to vote for these chumps. We’re post-establishment, not pre-, not para-.
HARRUMPH!
I am glad to hear these good things. I am glad to think that he will be okay without my support. I won’t criticize him for the good things he does.
Tulsi responds.
Boy does she. See the whole thread.
Brittan’s entire economy is based on football leagues and laundering money.
In the last year he seems to focus on “I like Ukraine more than you” and “Ewww. Get those blue collar plebes out of my GOP”. Meh. Let’s seem him do something hard like support J6 people stripped of their Constitutional rights.
Well look who’s being comforted by Tucker Carlson:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/exclusive-kremlin-putin-russia-ukraine-war-memo-tucker-carlson-fox/
Not clicking that. What’s the one liner?
I don’t really give a rat’s patoot. You either stand with the Constitution or the politics of the moment. And all of these so-called “First Principle Conservatives” are all about which way the wind is blowing. They are not principled at all.
I think it’s about which way THEIR wind is blowing. You know, the wind they cut loose at unfortunate times.
Are we now publishing acknowledged Russian propaganda on Ricochet?
Leaked Kremlin Memo to Russian Media: It Is “Essential” to Feature Tucker Carlson
The Russian government has pressed outlets to highlight the Fox host’s Putin-helping broadcasts.
I know, mother jones. It does have a picture of the memo though.
Well as Gen. Patton said, Russians think deviously, so maybe they’ve gamed it out with their real goal being to discredit Carlson. Who knows?
Hear, hear!
Link
It seems like it was just yesterday that the patchouli-stained staff of Mother Jones would crawl through ground glass to defend Russia.
Hey MJ! Putin is former KGB just like you guys are. He knows the secret handshake and everything!
I think that we need to recognize that Mitt may have had an emotional reaction to the situation and I am willing to cut him some slack. If you can look at what the Russians have done and not be appalled, then there is something wrong with you morally. Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson are being shown on Russian TV as propaganda. I respectively submit that I am more willing to understand Mitt’s anger than I am to the garbage that the other two have stated. Tulsi has been stated outtght falsehoods.
we are all supposed to be civil, but EJ Hill engaged in an ad hominem attack on the Romneys. I thought we on Ricochet were above that. I would respectfully state that our southern border and the Biden failure to control it has absolutely nothing to do Ukraine and connecting the two is a bogus argument
I will openly admit my bias Before I retired, I did business with Ukraine for the DoD. The Ukraine helped the US. I can’t say more than that other than I see the benefits of that cooperation today. If the southern border is more important than freedom for a friend or an intemperate remark by a well meaning politician then your values are misplaced
Sure. He might lose some money from his investments over there.
But treason?
Tulsi wears a bikini light years better than Mitt Romney.
can’t erase the mental picture, can you?
No quarter for Mittens. He ought to be run out on a rail.
It’s not ad hominem. It’s the truth. The Romneys have not and do not serve this country in uniform. And that is a problem.
People such as Bob Dole and Daniel Inouye were at opposite ends of the political spectrum but they both understood the human and personal impact of war. And so did the 114 other veterans of WWII who served in the Senate. People who have worn the uniform now make up less than 17% of the Congress, an 80-year low.
Veterans who served are the last people who would sling around the word “treasonous” as casually as the junior Senator from Utah. They are also the first to understand the enormity of asking Americans to fight and to possibly die. Romney acted with dishonor and we, as free citizens have the right to call him on that dishonor.
While I cannot say I disagree with you about holding no special regard for Ms. (and, very importantly to me) and Lt. Col (Reserve) Gabbard, as I am not aware of the absurd positions about which you write (but am certainly open to learning about them), I have been quite impressed by her recent appearances on the Tucker Carlson show, illustrating she is extremely well informed and, contrary to the little hissy fit thrown by Romney, very stable and rational. I am no admirer of Romney, to put it in the most gentlemanly way I know, but I was astonished that he would make such a grave charge against anyone, especially a former Congresswoman and one who, as I understand it, continues to discharge her reserve duties as an Officer in the United States Army. However, all of that being said (I tend to get a little verbose at times, an occupational hazard of many decades as a trial lawyer), my main point in making this comment is to bring to your attention, and that of our colleagues at Ricochet, a great Twitter thread in which Ms. Gabbard just destroys, again in my opinion, these ridiculous and slanderous statements made by Romney. They can be found here and in my humble opinion as one who has spent a lifetime looking for evidence and not just allegations and charges and “feelings”, she did “bring the evidence”, to be sure. Sincerely, Jim
Am I taking crazy pills, or are the majority of posts/comments I’m seeing here on Ricochet about the Ukraine/Russia situation more or less supporting Russia? At the least, it seems like there’s a lot of posts seemingly trying to equate the two countries’ actions recently.
What am I missing here?
I admit that is beyond the pale but I think I accurately described it as intemperate.
His statement was that Tuli Gaaberd
His statement was that her statements were treasonous. That was intemperate and over the top but given the emotion of the moment, at least understandable. There are many overreactions. People are human. You went lower and attacked his family and their service, that is the very definition of an ad hominem attack. Defend her statements as accurate but don’t assert that someone else’s family’s service or lack thereof is a legitimate refutation of an argument, much less the border. Shame on you