GOOD TREASON, BAD TREASON AND "TBD" TREASON

 We celebrate today a public, open,  contemptuous act of treason..

Refined in the simplest terms, the Declaration was nothing more than a bunch of "British subjects" defying their own government's rule.

Since we celebrate it – – and we did win the war – – it is, by definition, "good treason."

During that same period of time, Benedict Arnold conspired with "the enemy," (which was actually the government of citizenship for "Americans" at the time).  But this was abhorred to an extent that his name is a synonym for capital treason.  Bennie had a bad year.

So treason is good except when treason is bad. This can also give one a headache.

Fast forward to January 6, 2021. One of the people who, after breaching the perimeter, went to the Senate chambers said, "as long as we are here we might as well form a government!" While this is technically not treason (because we are not at war) it is somewhere between treasonous and treason-ish. Our legal system is punishing that fellow and his colleagues.

So what is the difference between "good treason" and "bad treason?"

My take is this. In the Revolutionary war era, the dissident Americans had a vision, if not yet a Constitution, that was based on egalitarian principles and a decentralization of power (no monarchs). The act of treason was done with a presumably benevolent purpose (give or take, of course, a few women and black people--we're still working on that).

Once again, fast forward to today. There are people who would like to eliminate our constitutional Republic in its current form. They would like to reverse some elections (who wouldn't?). But they spell out neither their end game or a set of principles which their "replacement government" would seek to feature.

So today we celebrate "good treason."

For those who would shred our current system, for your activities to be "good treason," you have to do what those brave "Americans" did in 1776. You would be required to spell out in reasonable detail the replacement system you would install in the stead of the Great Experiment that started in the 1770s.

Not saying it's impossible. It's just a very tall order. As has been said about our legal system: "It is terribly flawed, but it is the best one in the history of man."

Revisionists, it's your move