Guy Fawkes
John Stormer wrote None Dare call it Treason in 1964 (early LBJ administration), then did a 25 year update in 1990, mid-Bush I administration.)
Daniel Pipes wrote this (below) as part of a review in 1991, all before Clinton or Obama, making Stormer’s observations all the more salient, for Stormer wrote of a thing I first observed in the corporate world in the 80s, and have written much about since. I called it “cultural conspiracy”, which speaks to why taking back the culture is at least as important as taking back Washington.
The original edition of None Dare Call It Treason came out in 1964 and, without benefit of a prestige publisher or reviews, sold something on the order of seven million copies. Arguing that the United States had been betrayed by its elite, it is a classic in what Hannah Arendt has called “backstairs political literature.”
Surprisingly for the genre, it did not contain the usual virulent animosity toward Catholics, Jews, and the like; rather, it blamed communist sympathizers. Nor did it unambiguously point to a plan: “Is there a conspiratorial plan to destroy the United States into which foreign aid, planned inflation, distortion of treaty-making powers and disarmament all fit?” Stormer went no further than to resort to a metaphor about the pieces all fitting, whether planned by communists or not.
Yesterday Rick Perry, newly announced presidential candidate, in an ad lib moment, stated that if Ben Bernanke starts printing money before the next election, that will be a ‘treacherous..nah, what the hell (my thoughts, not Gov Perry’s:VB))…treasonous…”
President Obama was quick to rebuke Governor Perry, in that patronizing, pat- -on-the-head sort of a way only a 10th grade Halo warrior speaks about his chemistry teacher’s gauche shirt. He’s just a governor, new in the game. I’ll give him a pass, sayeth Obama.
Perry’s comment was a little Freudian slip, perhaps. But just like that, the “t” word is out there. And like it or not, the ante just got upped because of it.
For you see, Obama, along with his Vice President, and most of his Party, all have been calling most of the American people traitors since Inauguration Day, only in more couth language. (Even Krauthammer agrees.)
From the beginning, Obama and the Dem’s have been saying “If you’re against us, or against this plan or that program, you are against America. (You are being treasonous.)”
In short, L’estate c’est moi.
We’re Late to the Treason Train
Since Bill Clinton first strode up those steps to be sworn in as president in January, 1993, I wonder how many times that “t” word has crossed the minds of millions of Americans. We have witnessed not just conscious criminality, but indeed, attempts…successful attempts…to subvert the Constitution and the sovereignty of the United States.
But before you run off to make you own list of indictments, stop and ask yourself, knowing what we know about the Left now we didn’t know in Reagan’s day, how many kids then (grown ups now) had those same “t” thoughts about Reagan, Bush I or Bush II when they were in office?
If Treason were a train, the front cars would have been filled long before we even thought to get on. Chew on that, for it brings this whole idea of “treason” into unclearer focus.
What we didn’t know then, but we know now, is that the Left has lived in a “dark, dark world” (LadyPenguin’s apt title) for a very long time. What we know now is that they live in an alternate universe where Light is Dark, where fighting Evil is fighting Good, where Love is Hate, where Virtue is Weakness and Envy is Virtue. I can go on, as can you.
They live in a world where loving America, as you do, is treasonous, where loving liberty is treasonous, where holding to free markets and personal merit is treasonous. Where truth is treason. 
And they were on that train long before you even knew we were even selling military secrets to China in exchange for campaign contributions.
The truth is, the “t” word, like so many other words with a real dictionary meaning has been stolen, sort of like “love”, simply by allowing that any carnal act done in its name can also to be called “treason”. Today anybody can call anything treasonous, and that is now a part of the popular political culture.
Me? I have a legalistic view of treason, for one, under law, it’s a crime that sanctions execution; the death penalty. See the Rosenbergs. I’d like to see that restored.
The US Code is really pretty straightforward, but since almost no one is indicted for it anymore, modern notions of treason have migrated to coffee houses seeking a pseudo-academic consensus.
This consensus seems to involve a self-serving idea of treason not to mean anything they are currently using to overthrow change the current government or Constitution. Even kids who run off from California to join Al Qaeda in Afghanistan will find an ACLU defense somewhere, based on the theory, shared by Ron Paul I think, that in any conflict in which the United States figured into the original sin, such as installing the first shah in Iran in 1963, or making war with the Barbary Pirates in 1801, forever absolves a person from the ‘crime” of treason by fighting back against the United States.
Crazy stuff, huh?
One of the underlying reasons the Left insists that the Constitution is a living, breathing, ever-changing document is that you cannot indict, try and convict any one for then advocating or conspiring to “change” a document and system of government that is, by its very design, as formless, shifting, vaporous and nebulous as a passing cloud. You can’t betray a wisp.
You can also see why “original intent” and “strict construction” is so important to conservatism.
But most of all, it can’t be treasonous if it is about process. We are just now inquiring about what socialists and communists have been conspiring and answering in private conversation for over 50 years:
Taking over the American government, throwing down the Constitution, proscribing liberty as defined, and changing it into whatever version of socialism that can be desired is not treason…
…if you can just do it without violence, but rather through process.
As we all know now, this they’ve almost done. The Left has done a very good job of injecting their dark counter-world into our schools and popular culture, where, today, it is indeed almost a toss-up as to what treason is, and who the traitors really are….us or them.
When society cannot arrive at a consensus as to what treason is, any more than it seems it can about morality, truth, the legal dictionary meaning no longer matters. We can’t begin to deal with treason-the-law until we deal with treason-the-pop-meme.
This means that the issue that now divides us will ultimately be settled by force of arms, just as slavery once was…UNLESS…
…we rededicate ourselves to win, and win big, this next time around.
It’s that simple.
We still have the voting edge, but in my view 10%-20% isn’t really that safe a margin, particularly since, if you haven’t noticed, we (our side) are the ones still afoot, and they are the ones up on the horses. They still wear the badge.
And they would love to goad us into violence first, for while a good hard lick across the bridge of the nose with a rolled-up newspaper works wonders and still stays within my idea of good taste, it’s clear they are more than able and ready to engage in hard violence if we continue to take back territory.
There is much we will need to do. I have my own ideas how to prevent “treason” to become such a wispy and nebulous term ever again, but first, let’s win.
