Sedition and Treason

Sedition used to be a crime.  During WWI there was an outburst of patriotism and paranoia. The patriotism was because the unrestricted submarine warfare had enraged the reluctant nation into entering a European war it would rather stay out of.  The paranoia arose toward German immigrants, most of them first generation, who still had direct and recent ties to the mother land.

Many would argue this paranoia was in fact common sense, for two reasons:  One, German immigrants were very recently arrived in the United States, many still had allegiance to the Kaiser.   Two,  the Civil War was a few decades in the past and northern states remembered the struggles during the war against spies and espionage.  John Wilkes Booth was after all  a southern sympathizer, some say a spy, who assassinated Lincoln, dramatically affecting the post war nation.  There was recent concrete historical evidence of he damage sedition and treason could render.

So, the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, and free speech, anti-governmental talk was repressed, sometimes brutally.

We do not look back well at this time.  In fact, because of it the United States tolerates anti-governmental speech and action more than most other political states, it is seen as a dark time for civil liberties.

This is particularly evident today.  Radicals in the Republican Party are currently holding the country hostage to advance an agenda that by any measure is made to damage government itself.

The threat of default was used along with actually shutting down the government to advance a radical agenda, that called for upending established law, hamstringing the government's actions; during a TIME of WAR!

American combat troops are currently engaged in Afghanistan.  Casualties are happening, combat deaths are happening, while radical political elements are defunding the government and sabotaging the government.

That is sedition.  And they are getting away with it.

Ironically, this is being done by a political element that purports to be patriotic.  In fact, Senator Cruz has called the act of sedition a "Profile in Courage".  An act of courage?  To stop your government, and defund it during an act of war.

That is treason and sedition.  It should be dealt with as we did during WWI:  throw them in jail and hang the traitors.