Cynical Nation

U.S. Constitution -- Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Technically, I think quite a few lefties qualify for treason under the second clause of this definition, but the appropriate penalty for their transgressions should be public exposure and ridicule, not hanging.

There are a few real, or actual traitors around today - John "Taliban Johnny" Walker-Lindt and Lynne Stewart are two actual traitors. It's a disgrace that Walker-Lindt got only 20 years for his high crimes.

But there are many more "anti-Americans," or at least, people who've espoused various anti-American sentiments, for instance, "America is the world's biggest terrorist," or "the Bush administration is the 4th Reich" and any sentiments that root or take pleasure in America's misfortunes are all examples of "anti-American" statements or sentiments.

Not all people who've made anti-American statements are indeed anti-American, many are just, for lack of a better word, dipshits, and very few of those folks do anything to cross the line to actual treason or even sedition (inspiring anti-American thought and action)...Michael Moore and perhaps a few others do, as WF said above, qualify under the "providing aid and comfort to the enemy" portion of that definition, but most of those who oppose the current war on terrorism/radicalized Islam, including the likes of Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, Lew Rockwell, and most Libertarians are NOT.

Sorry, JMK, but saying that the Bush Administration is the Fourth Reich does not constitute being anti-American.

Whether you like it or not, George W. Bush and his henchmen do not = America.

This country was around long before this bunch of greedy, soulless bastards took power, and with any luck at all, it'll be around afterwards.

One of the most dangerous aspects of the way people view this current administration is this notion of "l'état, c'est lui" attitude -- that criticizing the president is the same as criticizing America, and that criticizing American policies as implemented by one party or one president is the same as "hating America."

There are plenty of progressive Americans like me who love their country, who appreciate the beauty of the precepts on which it was founded, and are appalled at watching this bunch cynically tear up the U.S. Constitution under the guise of "keeping us safe", but in reality, it's simply to consolidate their own hold on power.

And it's even MORE disheartening to see so many so-called libertarians applauding them doing so.

Actually it IS anti-American Jill because (A) equating this or any other duly elected U.S. administration to either Hitler or Stalin is a grievous insult to all those who actually suffered under those actual tyrannies...it is not merely a pathetic exaggeration, but a nefarious one as well, and (B) it posits that Americans, especially those "Red State Americans" (Bush voters) support a nazi-styled regime and thus ARE nazis themselves. So yeah, it's virulently anti-American.

Pretty much the same collection of kooks and weirdos said pretty much the same exact things about Guiliani during his tenure as Mayor of New York.

Thankfully, even in Liberal old New York, far more people seemed to support random stop and frisks, going after "quality of life crimes" to bag more serious offenders and lauded Bill Bratton, who when asked what all those poor "squeegee men" would do for money, after his initial squeegee-man round-up, responded, "I say, get off the booze, get off the drugs and get a job."

To this day Bratton's got a favored spot in my heart just for saying exactly what I've said many, many times, having worked twenty years in the South Bronx.

I LOVE that guy.

Astoundingly, that administration had a fair amount of inordinately vocal critics, most of them craven cowards who were easilly intimidated by "Rudy" in his iron-fisted press conferences, in which he routinely chastised errant questioners for asking what he deemed "stupid questions."

THAT, and the fact that those folks, most of whom vociferously defended the most blatant and egregious anti-Christian art from Jose Seranno's "Piss Christ" to the painting of the Virgin Mary heaped with elephant dung that hung in the Brooklyn Museum, were the same folks who ran for the hills when radical Islamicists a half a world away threatened anyone who'd dare run or support anything they perceived to be "anti-Muslim."

Turns out that perhaps these folks were all closet masochists who kinda liked being intimidated - Rudy did it and they loved it, the Islamo-cultists did it and they took it from THEM as well - and in the middle of a war against Islamo-cultism to boot!

Turns out, maybe the Christians of the West have been too nuanced...to "civilized." Perhaps a few well-placed beheadings and a couple of stonings of the offending parties and all these champions of all this "offending art" would've caved in to them as well?!

The fact that Western Christians haven't done such things and haven't forced conversions, mandated public worship and the like, PROVES beyond any doubt that there is no equivalence (except in the fantasies of the most paranoid anti-Christians) between Evangelical Christians and Islamo-cultists.

Hell, if there were any kind of equivalence, we'd know it by the fact that all the Christian critics would be long ago self-silenced...as they've stifled any of their own would-be criticisms of radicalized Islam.

Insults are not treason.

It is also not treasonous to point to warning signals of incipient tyranny.

Perhaps if more Germans had paid attention to what the Nazis were doing, the Reich could have been stopped sooner.

"It can't happen here" is a common sentiment. But it can.

I'm always amazed at the way Libertarians are jumping through hoops to justify everything the Bush Administration is doing to intrude on the privacy of Americans.

"Christianists" of the West (as opposed to "Christians") have engaged in some pretty heinous behavior here too, including the murder or abortion doctors and the threatened murder of others.

"Mainstream" evangelical Christians are not in the league with Islamocultists at present, though you have to admit that Christianity's past is rife with forced conversions and torture. I work with someone who is an evangelical Christian, and while we disagree on many things, she simply ministers, and does not proseletyze to those who are not receptive. I can respect that.

But if you think there is no such thing as "Christianism" that is similar to Islamofascism, go check out the Christian Dominionists.

And by the way, prospective 2008 Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback is one.