Do you remember when Truman fired MacArthur? Now, I fucking love MacArthur. Brilliant general. Cocky little shit at times but he knew what needed to be done. Hell, I support his opinion that we should've fought all the way into Beijing in the Korean War once the Reds sent troops across the border. However, I agree with Truman's decision to fire MacArthur. Because he didn't respect the office of the President. And goddamn it, if this isn't not respecting the office of the President, I don't know what is.
The president isn't king, and furthermore we live in a society where biased political parties do in fact control offices. If no-one is allowed to challenge a decision by the president, we become like Russia. What with their whole propaganda laws disallowing talk about the gays, or to insult the government, throwing musicians and bloggers in jail.
I don't agree with the Republicans, maybe they broke some other law, but this isn't the reason I disagree with them.
I agree with the points you've made, but they do not address the issue at hand. Nobody is saying that nobody is allowed to challenge the president. That is encouraged and as can be seen in the vicious publicity campaigns in our politics, fully utilized. However, this act is more than a simple act of free speech. To frame it as an issue of free speech is disrespectful to the concept of free speech itself. The problem here is not even about the Political parties. I'm not even disagreeing with the Republicans here.
The problem is that they have undermined the authority of the government of the United States of America, which diminishes our nation's legitimacy in conducting foreign affairs regardless of the political affiliation of our elected officials.
It may have been a move directed at President Obama, but its consequences affect the entire nation, themselves included.
It's like setting fire to your own apartment complex to prove that the fire fighters are incompetent, then expecting the rest of the tenants to applaud you for bringing to their attention the problems in the fire department.
I suppose, to get myself back on track, my first point is more along the lines of, I don't think they broke any laws. The logan act is very, very vaguely worded, and the interpretation by congress as of now is that it can't simply be used to ban free speech or discourse with foreign nationals, of which any citizen, even a politician, can send letters to a leader of a foreign country, even if that would appear to undermine U.S. Basically, the law doesn't apply to things that are already constitutionally defended, meaning that it's vague wording applies within the normal legal limits that have been established by congress for over two centuries. If it was ever prosecuted in that manner, to mean just "correspondence or intercourse", it would likely fail.
I also don't believe it necessarily acts against the U.S., just because it acts against a U.S. measure, or even the U.S. president. You would need something to effect the U.S. as a whole, such as murder, torture, theft, that sort of thing, going against a fundamental statute of the U.S., rather than simply opposing any political measure.
I suppose, there's a very, very fine line between politics and the general well being of the U.S., and finding that line is extremely rough; in fact, at times it's blurred. We're going to need to examine this more closely to figure out where that is. I don't think it's as cut and dry as "any citizen" and " directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse " with a foreign agent. Revealing troop movements or planning assassinations might fundamentally go against the U.S., but opposing a war or peace treaty for that matter, even if it's via involvement of foreign powers, doesn't necessarily count as treason. I can imagine dozens of democrats who coordinated efforts with the U.N. to question the international legality of the Iraq war, for example.
Another thing we have to consider with any vaguely worded articles such as this, is that they are up to interpretation. Take the 2nd amendment, for example. Obviously, people have the very general right to bear arms, but the interpretation of such is still up to debate. You can't own a nuke or a rocket launcher, or even a machine gun, unless it's an antique or deactivated. Arms also doesn't specifically reference guns or other similar weapons. If we take it by it's vagueness definitions, than it can mean either that no weapon can be banned, ever, which since anything can be a weapon, this implies nothing can be banned, or that simply being allowed a single weapon would be sufficient to allow us to keep and bear arms. The exact letter of the law is not so important with broad sweeping generalizations, so much as the interpretation and intent.
A completely different point would be that democrats have been accused of violating the law, multiple times, and were never prosecuted. These people include Jim wright and Nancy Pelosi, for example.
The Authority of the U.S. is a fickle thing, since it comes from political officials, and there was no public vote on this ruling. Undermining the legitimacy of the president and of the U.S. are two different things. While I see what these Republicans did as childish and stupid, I nonetheless can't agree with the reasons levied against them as being bad. I'm sure that if their actions stir up violence though, that they can be held responsible for that, just as if you were to yell fire in a theater, or if Justin Bieber ordered his fans to kill his rivals or what have you.
Edited by Manoka, 11 March 2015 - 10:12 PM.
