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It’s Time to Bring Back the Sedition Act
Ratheresque in Proportion, Newsweek Fabricates a Story about our Military.
By N. Beaujon
May 19, 2005
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Last week Newsweek magazine printed a story alleging that soldiers at Guantamamo Bay routinely dropped their enemy captives' Holy Koran in the toilet during interrogations. The story, not surprisingly, set the Muslim world ablaze with rioting, violence and anti-American sentiment. Sixteen people died, one hundred were injured and “holy” Mullahs everywhere were calling for yet another jihad against the United States (a.k.a. - “The Great Satan”). What else is new?
The story, as it turned out, was an unsourced fabrication, a slander, a lie, rushed into print with Dan Ratheresque zeal in an effort to humiliate, demoralize, and ultimately, endanger our military and Americans everywhere. Making U.S. soldiers’ job harder, more dangerous? Sure. U.S. establishment media “reporting for duty”. It’s time to bring back the Sedition Acts.
Early in our country’s founding, yes this was done by our founding fathers; there were a series of laws passed in anticipation of a possible war with France. The founders knew what problems big mouthed media traitors could cause during wartime and, in response, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 which made it illegal for any person to "print, utter, or publish ... any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government. [1]Plenty of journalists were tried for seditious libel, sadly, none of them were hanged but Congress didn’t stop there. The founding fathers, in their infinite wisdom, passed the Alien and Naturalization part of the law which authorized the president to deport any alien considered dangerous, even in a peace time. It made aliens register with the government immediately, declare their intent to acquire citizenship and made any persons from “enemy” nations ineligible for naturalization and immediately deportable upon executive order. [2] Do you think our founders were onto something here? The fact that it had occurred to them that there were traitors in our midst, in the media even, infiltrating from within and without out did not seem to be lost on these smart cookies and, so, they acted.
While the Sedition laws were eventually repealed others took their place. It was the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, passed during World War I, that allowed us to imprison traitors of all stripes (mostly communists and their union sympathizers infiltrating the U.S. from hostile nations). [3]
The Acts read, in part, "Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military... or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements . . . and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished[.]" [4] Under the Espionage and Sedition Act, Mike Isikoff could be sitting in prison. Any of these laws would have made Newsweek think twice before it put our soldiers at risk during wartime by publishing an incendiary article, calculated to gin up anti-U.S. sentiment at home and abroad.
Sadly, the U.S. lost its intestinal fortitude ages ago, mainly after countless civil libertarians convinced gullible Justices that trampling any type of political free speech was un-American. No matter that our troops were in battle, no matter young men and women were in harms way, if you wanted to whine and protest and make up ridiculous things about our armed forces (ala John Kerry and his rape and pillage fantasies; Jane Fonda mounting an enemy tank, calling our troops murderers and wishing she had"one of those blue eyed murderers" in her sites; false media reports that Americans were losing the war in Iraq, that voting in the new Iraq will be postponed; Yasar Arafat is a "man of peace"; terrorists are "freedom fighters", etc., etc., ) go right ahead. No accountability or fact-checking necessary. Better to let thousands die than have a “chilling effect” on the speech of anti-American half wits and cloistered media traitors. Ever since New York Times vs. Sullivan and Anderson v. Liberty Lobby its been impossible to hold media accountable for anything. These cases raised the bar for prosecuting media outlets so high that you have to show “an intentional, malicious and reckless disregard for the truth”. The standard is impossible to meet and, as a result, the constitutional protections of the First Amendment have given us two generations of snot-nosed media ingrates looking to win their Pulitzer Prizes on the backs of dead soldiers. That was what Vietnam was all about: A media so hostile to U.S. interests that they couldn’t have aided and abetted the enemy more efficiently than if Ho-Chi-Min, himself, was anchoring CBS news rather than that seditious gasbag Walter Cronkite.
Islam is a violent, ill-tempered religion, fueled by the single desire to kill anyone who doesn’t agree with the Koran. Muslim countries have a long history of stoning people for blasphemy and whipping up mobs into murderous frenzies as lunatic Mullahs have long concluded the only good infidel is a dead infidel and killing American soldiers is great for business. (Al Ja Zeera knows this, too. The U.S. media has quadrupled their ratings.) Therefore, anyone with even a remedial knowledge of Islam knew it was highly foreseeable that the Islamic world would implode when it heard about U.S. soldiers flushing their holy Koran down the commode. And explode it did. Newsweek lied, people died and many more deaths will come- mostly American, Israeli and Christian. Where is the Sedition Act when you need it?
The Supreme Court almost got close when under the Smith Act of 1940 (still on the books albeit heavily amended as 18 U.S. Code § 2385) it devised the “clear and present danger” test and upheld the conviction of eleven members of the Communist Party. The plurality of the court concluded that the evil the government sought to prevent, in this case advocating and conspiring to overthrow the U.S. Government, was serious enough to justify suppression of speech [5] In Dennis vs. U.S. the court concluded that “if there is such an evil that is within the power of the Congress to punish than the speech can be suppressed… Obviously, the [First Amendment] cannot mean that before the Government may act, it must wait until the putsch is about to be executed, the plans have been laid and the signal is awaited."
There is such a group and it’s called the “American media establishment” and they are a “clear and present danger” to our nation's interest. This test might be a good route to go to prevent another foreseeable media debacle driven by their overwhelming contempt of the very military that is sworn to protect them; by their utter disdain for the country that has so unjustly enriched them. Otherwise, we can skip all this nonsense and do what Lincoln did: suspend habeaus corpus and just preemptively round up every Columbia School of Journalism student or mendacious Newsweek reporter before they, once again, sucker punch us on the way to our own Armageddon.
[1]American History, Alien and Sedition Acts, Houghton Mifflin Company. http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=1ri8jbn6e5j44?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Alien+and+Sedition+Acts&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc02b
[2] Ibid. Also, The Alien and Sedition Acts have either expired or been repealed but all hope is not lost. The second Alien Act remains on the books in the form of 50 USC § 21 “Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies. The President is authorized in any such event, by his proclamation thereof, or other public act, to direct the conduct to be observed on the part of the United States, toward the aliens who become so liable; the manner and degree of the restraint to which they shall be subject and in what cases, and upon what security their residence shall be permitted, and to provide for the removal of those who, not being permitted to reside within the United States, refuse or neglect to depart therefrom; and to establish any other regulations which are found necessary in the premises and for the public safety. “
[3]The most famous effect was that the Act allowed the imprisonment of a bunch of truly obnoxious labor union sympathizers who were leaf letting and picketing against World War I and trying to obstruct the draft. See Schenck v. United States, Debs v. United States and Abrams v. United States. These cases affirmed convictions based on leaflets, and speeches attacking the President and armed services and in Debs’ case making speeches and handing out leaflests, especially in front of conscription centers, in an effort to block the draft.
[4]For the full text see "World War I, The U.S. Sedition Act"
16 May, 1918
The U.S. Sedition Act
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United States, Statutes at Large, Washington, D.C., 1918, Vol. XL, pp 553 ff.
A portion of the amendment to Section 3 of the Espionage Act of June 15, 1917.
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SECTION 3. Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, . . . or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct . . . the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or . . . shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States . . . or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully . . . urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both....
[5]Findlaw. US Constitution, First Amendment Annotations, p. 13, “Maintenance of National Security and the First Amendment" http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/13.html#t2 .