The Left Redefines Resistance as ‘Sedition’
Remember when dissent was patriotic?
by David Catron
December 19, 2020, 11:28 PM
It was inevitable that the Democrats would overreact to legal challenges by President Trump and other Republicans to corrupt election practices in swing states, but some responses have been unhinged even by their standards. One recurring refrain is particularly disturbing — that lawyers, members of Congress, and state attorneys general who supported post-election litigation are guilty of sedition. At least one Democratic congressman insists that attorneys representing the president in such challenges should be disbarred and that House members who supported Texas v. Pennsylvania in the Supreme Court shouldn’t be seated in Congress. One of the defendants in that ill-fated lawsuit described it as a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.â€
This dangerous view of dissent has a long, sordid history among progressives. Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, for example, was the driving force behind the notorious Sedition Act of 1918, passed by his fellow Democrats at a time when they controlled both houses of Congress. This anti-democratic outrage made it a felony crime to criticize the government and, by extension, Wilson himself. A violation of the Sedition Act was punishable by a fine of as much as $10,000 and imprisonment for as long as 20 years. More than 2,000 American citizens were arrested and prosecuted pursuant to the Sedition Act. This crime against democracy was at length repealed by the Republicans after the GOP won majorities in both houses of Congress in the 1918 midterm elections.
Considering its ignoble history, one would think journalists would avoid a term like “sedition.†Sadly, the legacy media has joined the creepy chorus described in the first paragraph above. The Week advises, “The Constitution has an answer for seditious members of Congress.†The New Yorker solemnly intones, “There needs to be a real reckoning.†Salon accuses the president of plotting a “seditious secession movement.†Esquire describes states that filed “friend of the court†briefs in favor of the Texas lawsuit as “accomplices†in a “seditious conspiracy.†All of this would be mildly amusing if the “S†word hadn’t actually been used by Pennsylvania’s attorney general in his reply brief to the Supreme Court. George Washington University law profressor Jonathan Turley explains:
Filing with the Supreme Court is the very antithesis of sedition. Seeking judicial review is not subversion of the Constitution or a call to rebellion. It is using the constitutional process. If going to the courts is “seditious,†going to church must be atheism… It is hardly compelling for Attorney General Josh Shapiro to argue that a filing is reckless and unfounded by using reckless and unfounded rhetoric. Such hyperbolic language may thrill the base but will not likely thrill the Court.
more
https://spectator.org/election-resistance-sedition/
