Treason talk.

Let's look back before this week, to "treason" as it has appeared within the lifetime of this blog. In chronological order:

April 27, 2005: Discussing the "blood" metaphor in constitutional law, I quoted Article III: "The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."

May 28, 2006: I wrote about the protest singer Phil Ochs declaring the Vietnam War over:

So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is too young to die
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over

July 1, 2006: "The editors of The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times explain how they decide when to publish a secret... Baquet and Keller have written a lengthy defense of their behavior, behavior that they know has been severely criticized, even called 'treason.'"

September 20, 2006: "To me, that's treason. I call it treason against rock-and-roll, because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics," said Alice Cooper, indicting rock stars who were telling people to vote for John Kerry.

August 3, 2007: Markos Moulitsas says that in 2002, "Dissent against the president was considered treason."

August 11, 2007: A 9/11 truther criticizes me for declining to debate him, which he took to mean that I know I'm "complicit in covering up mass murder and high treason."

May 12, 2008: A scholar assures us that the Muslim world would view Obama, the son of a Muslim father, as guilty of apostasy, which has "connotations of rebellion and treason," which is considered "worse than murder."

September 12, 2011: I'm live-blogging a debate in which "treason" is thrown around casually: "Perry stands by his 'almost treasonous' remark, referring to the use of the Federal Reserve for political purposes... Huntsman accuses Perry of treason for saying we can't secure the border."

May 8, 2012: "Isn't it funny, this 'treason' incident?" Mitt Romney, running for President, failed to chide a woman who asked whether Obama should be tried for treason. I brought up (as I did today), the 1964 book "None Dare Call It Treason." I also quoted the casual use of "treason" by Chief Justice John Marshall  Cohens v. Virginia to refer to doing something unconstitutional. ("We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the Constitution.") And a commenter brought up an even more venerable use of the word, Patrick Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it." That made me say: "The country was founded on treason. We celebrate the treason we like."

Also on May 8, 2012: "Obama supporters who express outrage over the use of the word 'treason' seem to think the word means nothing but to the crime defined in law — as if the woman Romney talked to wanted Obama tried and executed. It's as if people who say 'property is theft' are freakishly insisting that property owners be prosecuted for larceny. Think of all the words we use that have more specific legal meanings that do not apply: This job is murder... The rape of the land... Slave to love..."

June 17, 2013: Edward Snowden explains why he left the country: " [T]he US Government... immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it."

July 26, 2013: From a post about the death penalty: "Here's the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, which found the death penalty for rape (even rape of a child) to be unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. No one has been executed in the U.S. for a crime other than murder since the 1960s, though the Kennedy case leaves open the possibility of capital punishment 'for other non-homicide crimes, ranging from drug-trafficking to treason.'"

April 22, 2014 : Above the Law had hyperventilated, "Justice Scalia Literally Encourages People To Commit Treason," and I punctured it, saying Scalia was just giving his usual speech about the Constitution, which is always subject to the right of revolution explained in the Declaration of Independence. I bring up Patrick Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it."

February 23, 2015: "'Edward Snowden couldn't be here for some treason,' said Neil Patrick Harris, the Oscars host, when the documentary about him won an award." I said: "I liked the joke, because of its language precision and because it seemed at least a tad risky in the context of Hollywood celebrating itself."

February 29, 2016: Trump hesitated to "unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election" after Duke it would be "treason to your heritage" for a white person not to vote for Trump.

October 14, 2016: "Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree," said Ezra Pound, who was charged with treason in WWII. He was disaffected after WWI, moved to Italy, felt inspired by Mussolini, and went on the radio criticizing the U.S., FDR, and the Jews.

December 21, 2016: I quoted the official course description for "The Problem of Whiteness," a course offered in the African Cultural Studies department of my university, the University of Wisconsin–Madison: "In this class, we will ask what an ethical white identity entails, what it means to be #woke, and consider the journal Race Traitor’s motto, 'treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.'"

January 16, 2017: I quote someone talking about Chelsea Manning: "He is a member of the military who knowingly committed treason. His, or her, gender status has nothing to do with his conviction for treason."

February 10, 2017: I quoted Trump (before his election) talking about Edward Snowden: "I think he's a total traitor and I would deal with him harshly," "And if I were president, Putin would give him over," and "Snowden is a spy who should be executed." I wondered: "But maybe you think Trump will end up looking good forefronting the iniquity of treason."

February 7, 2018: Trump had used the word "treasonous" to describe the Democrats who didn't applaud during his State of the Union Address. Yeah, it was a joke, but: "He's President and in the position of enforcing the law, and from that position punching down. He really should not be joking about treason. And I get that he's punching back, and that's his style. But people aren't just idiots if they feel afraid of a President who isn't continually assuring us that he's aware of his profound responsibilities."

April 17, 2018: I quoted Neil Gorsuch, concurring — and voting with the liberals ‚ in a case about immigration: "Vague laws invite arbitrary power. Before the Revolu­tion, the crime of treason in English law was so capa­ciously construed that the mere expression of disfavored opinions could invite transportation or death. The founders cited the crown’s abuse of 'pretended' crimes like this as one of their reasons for revolution. See Declaration of Independence ¶21."

May 4, 2018: A conservative commentator sarcastically said he was "waiting for the Left to scream treason" over John Kerry's "quiet play to save Iran deal with foreign leaders."

July 17, 2017: I quoted Byron York: "Would it have been appropriate for the Trump campaign to try to find the [Clinton] emails?... What if an intelligence operative from a friendly country got them and offered them? And what about an unfriendly country? Would there be a scale, from standard oppo research on one end to treason on the other, depending on how the emails were acquired?"

"It’s striking to me how many of the architects of [libertarianism] seem to be on the autism spectrum — you know, people who don’t feel solidarity or empathy with others, and who have difficult human relationships sometimes."

Said Duke history professor Nancy MacLean, quoted in "Duke students rebuke prof for saying libertarians are autistic" at Campus Reform. MacLean, who has written a book on the libertarian economist James Buchanan, was giving a long lecture when she was asked if she thought Buchanan was motivated by “personal greed” or “malevolence.” She gave what might have sounded, in context, like an empathetic understanding of his sort of mind — that he, like other libertarians she's observed — seems to be somewhere on the autism spectrum.

“My initial response was that I wanted her to be punished,” said Hunter Michielson, president of the school’s Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) chapter. Michielson realized that punishing the professor was "hypocritical for him as a libertarian," but he decided to do something else that I'll call hypocritical, petition the university to put out an official statement:

“I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the university stand with conservative, libertarian, and autistic students and community members and say that just because you are a libertarian doesn’t mean you are autistic and just because you are autistic doesn’t mean you lack empathy,” Michielson remarked. “College should be a place where you confront difficult opinions,” he added, saying that despite experiencing classroom discrimination for his views, having liberal-leaning professors has been a welcome component of his education given his conservative background.

I'd say, forget the petitions and the official statements and set up a debate or a panel discussion on politics and empathy or human psychology and political preferences. Let's get deep and scientific on what's really going on, rather than take offense and try to scare the person into shutting up.

It seems to me that MacLean is contributing to the marketplace of ideas. It's awkward to drag people with autism in as if you are disrespecting them, but some of that disrespect is coming from Michielson, who says: “I struggle to accept that she actually believes libertarianism or conservatism is the result of autism."

First, MacLean said "seem to be on the autism spectrum." A lot of people — including people we encounter in everyday life who are not overwhelmingly disabled — seem to be on the autism spectrum. It may be a bit offensive to say that, mostly because it sounds disparaging toward people with autism. But MacLean was not "speculating that support for individual liberty might actually be the result of a mental disorder" — as Campus Reform puts it. She was trying to understand Buchanan, after somebody else speculated that he was afflicted by “personal greed” or “malevolence.”

And, frankly, I suspect that libertarians are reacting out of recognition that — however possibly offensively MacLean put it — there is some truth to her observation.

Note: I've incurred the wrath of libertarians for daring to talk about their psychology. Here's a good starting point if you want to examine my motivations.

"Duke Divinity Crisis: The Documents Are Out."

Have you been following the "Duke Divinity Crisis" with Rod Dreher at The American Conservative?

Excerpt from the documents:

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

I’m responding to Thea’s exhortation that we should attend the Racial Equity Institute Phase 1 Training scheduled for 4-5 March. In her message she made her ideological commitments clear. I’ll do the same, in the interests of free exchange.

I exhort you not to attend this training. Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty. When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show. Events of this sort are definitively anti-intellectual. (Re)trainings of intellectuals by bureaucrats and apparatchiks have a long and ignoble history; I hope you’ll keep that history in mind as you think about this instance....

"This was an utterly mad politically correct idea written by extremists at a university already extreme in this direction."

"Among its targets were students who took practical courses like economics and pre-med and tried to use college to get a job. It was going to begin with a year-long common course that laid down the correct propaganda line. Thank God the majority of the faculty has not lost its mind.

A comment on "Years of Work, Tabled/Collapse of undergraduate curricular reform at Duke illustrates the difficulty of building consensus on just what students need to learn" (at Inside Higher Ed).

The name of the commenter matches the name of a Duke professor.

A Duke freshman refuses to read an Alison Bechdel's graphic novel "Fun Home" on the ground that to look at it is immoral.

A WaPo op-ed by Brian Grasso. The book, which "includes cartoon drawings of a woman masturbating and multiple women engaging in oral sex," was assigned to all freshmen. Grasso doesn't resist the requirement of reading material he disagrees with or reading about sex. Pictures are different, in his view.

He cites the words of Jesus: “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” and “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.”

Jesus seems (to me) to be disapproving of the feeling that results from looking at women (whom one frequently encounters in real life and not merely in pictures). I don't see that as saying don't look at pictures, just don't look at them with lust, and don't look at real, live women with lust. But: 1. You could decide that you need to avoid looking at certain things because you predict that they will inspire lust, and 2. Grasso is entitled to his own interpretation of the religion, including reading "looking at a woman lustfully" to mean looking at a drawing of a woman engaged in sex.

Grasso anticipates that some people will say that he doesn't have to go to Duke, and if he chooses to attend, he needs to do the assignments, and if he can't, he ought to go somewhere else. But he argues: 1. That graphic depictions of sex are rarely part of a class assignment and unlikely to be that important, and 2. People like him contribute to diversity.

There are over 1,000 comments. The first one I saw (the most recent) was:

You should be treated like any one who chooses not to complete an assignment, whether the reason is they were drunk, the dog ate the book, or you flushed it down the toilet.   Your religious self-righteous rambling is rather irrelevant. If you get a zero on this part of the class and can still go one, great. If not, then drop the class like all others.  What makes you and your beliefs any different than that of a person who thinks certain books are boring or too difficult or "not culturally compatible" with what they believe in?

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade said: "Everybody Draw Jesus Looking Lustfully At Cartoon Drawings Of Women Masturbating And Engaging In Oral Sex Day."

The SAG Awards, Get to Know Your Rabbit. The SAG Awards were awfully dull. One big surprise--Johnny Depp won the best male actor award--but then he wasn't there, so the moment fizzled. The best thing about the SAG Awards is that they give awards for entire ensembles. So they give the TV one to Sex and the City, but Sarah Jessica Parker is a no-show, and then they give the movie one to Lord of the Rings, and a huge group of lesser actors assembles on stage and mills about, while Sean Astin babbles boringly about something Guild-ish, until the hulkish John Rhys-Davies shoves him aside, seemingly for being tedious.

Lately, Rhys-Davies has been having some troubles. As he puts it: "I'm burying my career so substantially ... that it's painful."

It was only through Astin's speech last night that I realized he was Patty Duke's son. He didn't name her but mentioned that his mother had been president of the Screen Actor's Guild, and I put two and two together. John Astin is not his natural father, but adopted him after he married Patty Duke.

So let me just take this opportunity to say how much I love John Astin. And I don't just mean that I love him as Gomez on The Addams Family. I love him as Harry Dickens on I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, And I love him as Turnbull in Get to Know Your Rabbit.

I saw Get to Know Your Rabbit when it was shown, pre-release, in 1971, to a test audience in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I and it seemed like everyone else in that theater experienced it as the funniest movie we had ever seen. Somehow, even though it was directed by Brian De Palma and has Orson Welles in its cast, it fell into oblivion. I still have never come close to laughing as much at a movie as I did that night. I finally found a videotape of it, watched it again, and couldn't recapture the original feeling, maybe because I knew all the surprises. But Astin stands out as especially funny, especially, for some reason, while trying to keep pencils from rolling off his desk. For those in the know: "Pass your hand through the flame!"