A Liberal
Dose
January 20,
2022
Troy D.
Smith
“’Seditious
Insurrectionists’ Need to Understand What Treason Is”
Back in 2003, at the beginning of the war with Iraq, I was a
student at Tech (I was late getting started) and a member of the College
Democrats. We were opposed to the war -anyone paying attention could tell there
were no weapons of mass destruction, and we were being fed a line as an excuse to
invade. But that didn’t mean we were opposed to the men and women who were
going to have to go do it. We started a drive to collect toiletries and phone
cards to send to the troops overseas, and volunteered at a table in the
university center to take donations. I will never forget the large number of
fellow students who made a special effort to yell at us, swear at us, and
deride us as traitors to America -because we were Democrats. That same year,
Ann Coulter wrote a book (very popular in some circles) called Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War
to the War on Terror.
That was not really the beginning, but it was certainly an
early high (or low) point in the progression of conservatives not just
disagreeing with liberals/progressives, but of viewing them as traitors who
want to destroy America. And it has only intensified in the last decade. It is
everywhere you look in a red state such as ours; television pundits, newspaper
columns, and the guy you vaguely know on Facebook, all saying that you should
arm yourself and be prepared to shoot your neighbors because they are “enemies
of the Constitution.”
Here’s what I haven’t noticed much, though -specific
allegations of specific “crimes” with any credible evidence to back them up. It
mostly seems to be, “you’re a traitor because I say so” or “you’re a traitor
because you don’t share my opinions” or “you’re a traitor because I saw
something on Youtube.”
And yet. Here we are. In the midst of an investigation into
an unruly mob (that was very intentionally stoked up) storming the Capitol,
smearing their own feces on the wall, and making a very plausible attempt to
assassinate the vice-president -all in effort to prevent Congress from
certifying the electoral votes in an election that their candidate handily lost.
Think about that -they were trying to prevent Congress from doing its
constitutionally mandated job, while claiming they were doing so in order to
defend the Constitution. You will find no promotion or defense of angry mobs
violating the Constitution in the Constitution. An effort to change the outcome
of a decided election, and therefore in effect overthrow the Constitutional
government, is rightly defined as an insurrection.
In their case, there were clear laws being broken -and not
just misdemeanors, or even serious assault, but treason against the
Constitution. A lot of Trump voters who were embarrassed or dismayed on that
day quickly changed their tunes, and started claiming that horrible scene was
not a very big deal and was just tourists being excited.
The Justice Department has charged several individuals with
“seditious conspiracy.” Seditious, if you didn’t know, means treasonous. The
charge is that they “did knowingly conspire, confederate, and agree, with other
persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury, by force to prevent, hinder, and
delay the execution of any law of the United States.”
Every day, investigators are learning more about those
“other persons” and the means by which they purposely laid the groundwork for
insurrection. More arrests will come. And the perpetrators will continue to be
people who think anyone who disagrees with them is a traitor -while they have
supported or participated in literal sedition.
Maybe you think I’m harping on this topic too much. Well, it
can’t be ignored or forgotten. We can’t just sweep it away. And everyone who
supports the actions of that day needs to take a step back from the abyss and
understand just what they encourage stepping into.
--Troy D. Smith,
a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech.
His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
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