Littlecountrylost.blogspot.com

Unfortunately, this is another area that our government has long term experience with. Way back around World War I, President Woodrow Wilson urged the passing of the Espionage Act of 1917, which made it illegal to distribute information that was considered “advocating or urging treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to any law of the United States”. The Sedition Act of 1918, an amendment to the Espionage Act, made it illegal for Americans to use “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” when talking about the government, the flag, or the military during a war. Since this time, many aspects of the Espionage Act have either been repealed or counter-legislated, but parts of it still remain today. Ironically, by revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney could serve time for violating the Espionage Act (if we still had the rule of law in this country, a subject that will be tackled in Step 10).
Closer to our timeframe though, in the 1950s, the stated reason J. Edgar Hoover planned to lock up 12,000 people was because they were guilty of “treason, espionage, and sabotage”. He didn’t elaborate on what acts defined those terms. During the Cold War, dissenters from official policy were silenced, blacklisted, or arrested, especially during the second Red Scare of the early 1950’s. During the 1960s and 1970s, anti-war protestors, including people like Senator John Kerry who fought in the war, were branded as treasonous for speaking out against the government decisions that were causing more and more people to be unnecessarily killed. This is not unlike the experience of veterans who have protested the Middle Eastern wars they have had to fight during the last 7 years.
The Club took the practice of labeling dissenters as treasonous to another level during the Bush administration’s reign with the help of television and radio. By arranging for like-minded propaganda distribution artists to have many means of access to the airwaves, The Club has used the media to repeat the mantra that dissenters are treasonous over and over again. Bill O'Reilly criticized progressive columnist Robert Scheer by labeling him a "traitor". Reagan administration official Richard Perle, called Seymour Hersh "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." Other conservatives, such as Ann Coulter and her supporters, have labeled “liberal Democrats the party of treason”. Rush Limbaugh accused former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle of an "attempt to sabotage the war on terrorism."
Now, instead of fighting back, Congress is giving them a hand. HR 1955, which has already passed the House of Representatives, and S 1959, which has been introduced and is awaiting debate in the Senate, is the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act of 2007, otherwise known as the Thought Crime Prevention Act of 2007. This bill would create a commission that would study how to best identify and punish words encouraging dissent. It would then set up offices around the country in universities where the thought crime police will house their operations.
Littlecountrylost.blogspot.com