Harding's Path

Nick Carraway: You can't repeat the past.
Jay Gatsby: Can't repeat the past? Why, of course you can!
--The Great Gatsby

The dominant narrative about President Warren G. Harding was that he was a boob who ran a corrupt administration. To be sure, the Tea Pot Dome scandal happened on his watch, and, similar to Donald Trump, Harding may have been far too trusting of those working in his administration.

However, as this article points out, Harding achieved much during his term in office--a term that was cut short by his untimely, and somewhat suspicious, death in 1923.

A likeable sort who was elected by a landslide in 1920, President Harding was determined to lead Americans weary of war and Wilsonian progressivism into a peaceful age of prosperity. After quickly overcoming a post-war depression using a 'hands off' approach completely lost on modern administrations, Harding focused on perhaps the crown jewel of his legacy: foreign policy.

Harding clearly ended WWI for America. He withdrew troops from the German Rhineland, presided over agreements on war debt, and shunned the military-industrial complex's calls for arms buildup. He convened the Washington Disarmament Conference in late 1921 to ink international agreements on weapons limitations. Harding also withdrew US troops from Latin America and signed several treaties to ease tensions in Asia.

Completing work begun as a senator prior to his presidency, Harding killed his predecessor's League of Nations proposal. "America can be a party to no permanent military alliance," he said. "It can enter into no political commitments, nor assume any economic obligations which will subject our decisions to any other than our own authority."

Wise words which were, of course, subsequently ignored by bureaucrats following WWII.

Warren G. Harding reversed the dangerous internationalism of Woodrow Wilson and put the United States back on the path of neutrality and non-interventionism. America proceeded to roar down that passageway during the Twenties.

Harding's achievements provide a roadmap for how to get back onto that path today.

Treason Mania

"A toast...to high treason. That's what these men were committing when they signed the Declaration. Had we lost the war, they would have been hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, and--my personal favorite--had their entrails cut out and BURNED!"
--Benjamin Franklin Gates (National Treasure)

Glen Greenwald discusses the increased tendency to label people as 'traitors.' Out of concerns that treason term would be abused for political gain, the framers defined the limited scope of the crime in the Constitution itself. Per Article 3, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Treason was the only crime to be delineated in the Constitution. Why? Because the framers anticipated the grave danger of repressive governments seeking to silence criticism of, or opposition to, government policy by making it a capital crime.

Stated differently, they knew that liberal interpretations of treason would squash freedom of speech.

Given its constitutional limitations, treason has rarely been prosecuted in the United States, and less than 12 Americans have been convicted of treason in the nation's history.

Unfortunately, legal limitations have not prevented politicians and their media minions from shouting "Treason!" in the direction of those who behave in manners deemed unsupportive of consensus government policy.

Greenwald suggests that the Trump era elevated accusations of treason from a periodic transgression to a standard, reflexive way of criticizing political opposition. Indeed, the 'scandal' investigations that embroiled Trump's term can easily be seen as a protracted treason campaign. As Greenwald observes,

"The dominant narrative insisted that Trump and his allies were controlled by Moscow, subservient to the Kremlin, and were acting to promote Russian over American interests. That Trump was loyal not to the country that elected him but, instead, to an adversarial nation is something Democrats believe as an article of faith."

In reality, of course, many of those who have accused Trump of treason seem to possess little affinity for the fundamental institutions that underpin the United States and, in fact, seem hell bent on overthrowing them. As such, the Trump Treason narrative seems another ironic act of projection by this group. 

In any event, thanks to the Trump Treason years, "an entire generation has been trained to believe that 'treason' is the crime of expressing views that undermine Democratic Party leaders, diverge from the US security state, and/or dispute the consensus of the US corporate press."

Enter, now, the Ukraine conflict. Russia's invasion of Ukraine three weeks ago has taken treason mania to another level. (Although Greenwald calls it 'never-before-seen,' I suspect that we have, judging from what I've gathered about the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, as well as the Wilson and FDR years). People suggesting that NATO expansion or any other factor beyond 'Putin' helped spark this conflict, or that Ukrainian borders are not vital enough interests to the US to warrant American involvement, are reflexively labeled 'traitors.'

Our founding ancestors lived this accusation. By speaking out against the King of England they were deemed traitors for voicing legitimate political opposition to the crown. They understood that the hallmark of tyranny is intolerance of voices that questioned official government policy, and to criminalize them if possible by equating dissenting voices with treason.

That's why the framers articulated the First Amendment, and a limited criminal scope for treasonous behavior. 

If you've been labeled a 'traitor' for dissenting from the party line on Ukraine, then find comfort that you're on the right side of history and of reason. Don't take the insults personally.

Better yet, pray for them.

Globalism and Ingsoc

"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever."
--O'Brien (1984)

Informative account of how globalism was spawned by English socialism (or Ingsoc per Orwell's Nineteen Eight-Four). The point of origin was 19th century British imperialism which Victorian administrators projected world dominion as inevitable. The media was on board early promoting a 'Parliament of man' (Tennyson, 1842) under the rule of a 'Greater Britain' (NYT, 1897) composed of the UK, US, and other English-speaking countries.

Higher ed joined in as well. Oxford professor John Ruskin inspired generations of bureaucrats with his 'Reign or Die' lecture of 1870. He argued that the British Empire should conquer barbarous peoples and spread what amounted to socialist values across the globe. It should be noted that Ruskin called himself a Communist before Marx completed his seminal Das Kapital work.

Backed by the legitimacy of the professoriate, British statesman such as Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Miner lead the country's leadership down the globalization path. Miner established 'Round Table' groups to promote a worldwide federation of English-speaking countries. In each target country, local leaders were recruited as 'Judas goats' to lead their countries to the slaughter of WWI. The 'War that Will End War,' wrote novelist H.G. Wells in 1914, would result "in a Peace League that will control the globe." Wells, by the way, was among British mediates recruited by Britain's War Propaganda Bureau (a.k.a. Wellington House) as a secret operative.

British leaders knew that the Peace League would never come about without US support. Thus, British intelligence worked to penetrate the Wilson White House--an endeavor that proved easy. Among their top recruits was Edward House, a close advisor to the president with generational ties to England. House worked with British spies, including US station chief for the SIS Sir William Wiseman, to influence US policy toward participation in WWI and assembling the subsequent Peace League. British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey coined the term 'League of Nations' that, through the persuasive influence of House, Wilson proposed to the world. 

It should be plain, then, that counter to narrative of popular history, President Wilson was not the father of globalism. Instead, he was merely a high profile mouthpiece for an idea that had been nearly a century in the making.

Following WWI, House and Wiseman guided Wilson's every move at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. To the disdain of British globalists, however, Wilson could not persuade the US Senate to vote in favor of the League of Nations. Consequently, globalist sympathizers in the UK and US governments established groups, such as the US Council on Foreign Relations, to coordinate policy in a manner that kept the torch burning.

As we now know, Wells' War that Would End War didn't do the trick. In midst of WWII, Winston Churchill picked up the torch of globalism, calling for a 'special relationship' between US and UK to form a 'world organization' that prevent another world war. The United Nations was subsequently founded in 1945.

But how could there be peace without tools for war that would keep the peace? Churchill argued that yet another English-speaking groups authorized to make war was necessary to enforce the globalist vision. Thus, NATO in 1949.

And so became the British foundation for globalism foreseen by Orwell and in play today.

Sedition Act of 1918

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
--Simon & Garfunkel

In addition to other activities such as the Committee on Public Information that 'encouraged' domestic support for US involvement in WWI, the Wilson administration orchestrated passage of the Sedition Act of 1918. A year earlier, the Espionage Act had been passed that made it a crime to convey any information deemed to interfere with the prosecution of the war effort.

The Sedition Act broadened the scope of this legislation to to include speech that cast the government or war effort in a negative light. Enforcement of the Act was accomplished not only thru formal legal channels, but also via various patriotic groups that were essentially deputized by the federal government to surveil prospective anti-war activity and, if need be, make citizen arrests of people deemed to be in violation of the Act.

The name of the game, as promoted by President Wilson, was to intimidate people into silence and submission about the war effort.

The law was challenged in court to no avail, as a Wilson-friendly Supreme Court upheld the Sedition Act in Abrams v. United States (1919). Although major portions of the Espionage Act remain law today, the Sedition Act was repealed in 1920 when much Wilsonian wartime legislation was swept away.

Subsequently, the Brandenburg ruling has inspired claims that legislation similar to the Sedition Act would never pass constitutional muster today.  Of course, that is what our founding ancestors surely believed when they inked the Constitution originally.