September 29, 2009

Today's Word Is "Treason" (UPDATED)

The hyperbole needs to end. Right f--ing now.  Conservatives need to condemn birthers. They need to cast out the nutjobs that are poisoning serious debate about serious issues. They need to dump WorldNetDaily. And now they need to dump NewsMax. Why?

NewsMax has now crossed the line into inciting treason. Specifically in the form of a military coup. Read this and I defy you to tell me, credibly, how the author would condemn what he's writing about. He clearly looks forward to the day that a "civilized" and "bloodless" coup puts the military in charge of America's political institutions and President Obama is reduced to a figurehead.

I'm very sorry you don't like the outcome of the election, John Perry. But if you don't like what President Obama is doing with his power, remember the advantages of limited government which conservatives so enthusiastically turned their backs on for eight years, and then think up a meaningful alterantive policy platform to what the Democrats are offering.  But don't have a nocturnal emission about the Joint Chiefs of Staff staging a coup and de-fanging the constitutionally-elected leader of the Republic and if you do, have the good manners to clean up after yourself in private.

The United States of America has survived politicians making radical changes to the government in the past.  We survived Andrew Jackson.  We survived Abraham Lincoln.  We survived Teddy Roosevelt.  We survived Woodrow Wilson.  We survived Franklin Roosevelt.  In living memory, we survived Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, each of whom in their own ways severely tested the resilience of the body politic.  We survived the Vietnam War.  We've survived the invasion of Iraq.  We will survive Barack Obama.  We will be poorer for it, and probably not any healthier.  We will wind up with an inconclusive resolution to combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.  But we will be an intact democracy with thriving governmental institutions.

We will, that is, unless you have your way with your fever dream of a military coup.  In which case the Coup Conspiracy of 1934 will have realized itself three generations later.

I have a hard time believing that serious military leaders would seriously contemplate what this asshat is writing about.  Serious military leaders are smart men and women, who understand very well that there are vicissitudes in politics and we are going through a cycle that will eventually turn back in the other direction.  While they may differ from the Administration on any of a number of political issues, no officer from any branch of the service I have ever met has failed to grasp that the military is the servant of the Republic and not its master -- and not a single one of them has ever left me with the impression that they desire that role to change.

Well, I have had friends who have cracked jokes, but it was clearly-understood that they were joking.  But this clown isn't joking.  He thinks there is some kind of a constitutional crisis going on.  There isn't and claiming otherwise while invoking the power of the military to depose the democratically-elected government (however incompetent and corrupt it might be) is the summit of political irresponsibility.

UPDATE: After hit Perry's seditious screed hit the top ranking on memeorandum, making it the most-linked-to-recent posting on the whole Internet, Newsmax took the story down from its site completely. No probalo -- nothing that is ever posted on the Internet ever really goes away.

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