Could somebody please explain the difference between people on the Right calling the eight GOP congressmen who voted for the Obama-Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade anti-global warming energy bill “cap and traitors” and the far lefties at Moveon.org calling Gen. David Petraeus “General Betrayus”?
Sorry, folks, but, as much as I agree this bill is a disaster for America, calling these eight RINOs “traitors” is beyond the line. Here’s why: The word “traitor” has specific reference to national loyalty. Benedict Arnold was a traitor, as were spies like John Walker, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and Aldrich Hazen Ames. The traditional penalty for treason is death, though in recent decades that sentence has been all but forgotten in the U.S., though not in other nations.
When somebody promises you they will take a certain course of action not involving national loyalty, but then does another, they are a rat, a double-crosser, or a jerk, but they are not a traitor because national security is not jeopardized by their failure to do what they promised to do. The Obama-Waxman-Markey bill will certainly burden the U.S. economy, but it won’t destroy it. Thus, referring to the eight GOP members who voted for the bill is unjustified.
But isn’t “cap and traitor” simply an acceptable rhetorical device whereas “General Betrayus” is self-evidently character assassination? “Rules for Radicals” author Saul Alinsky, President Obama’s inspiration, would see both terms as illustrations of his principle of isolating opponents, discrediting them and making them objects of disgust, hatred and villification.
Let’s leave that to the Left.
UPDATE: A challenge for my critics
My goodness, I seem to have stuck my head into a hornet’s nest. Rather than attempting to respond to each of the arguments being presented by those who disagree with me (and there is a logical, non-abusive case to be made contrary to my view), I would simply ask my critics to show me one example of Ronald Reagan calling a single one of his opponents traitors.
UPDATE II: That’s one
Regarding my challenge above, reader Gekkobear points to a 1964 Time magazine article that reports Reagan’s use of the term “traitors” to describe Republicans who opposed Barry Goldwater, and to a Claremont Institute piece that claims Reagan was thinking of Sen. Thomas Kuchel in telling a Los Angeles YR group that “it would make no sense” to turn the party over to such “traitors.”
Now, anybody have an example after 1964?
