Hello, My Name is Mike, and I Am a Traitor (according to Ann Coulter)

Ann Coulter's latest book has created an uproar in political circles, due to its accusations of all Democrats being traitors. Brendan Nyhan, who apparently has the stomach to read and analyze such literary trash, gives a scathing analysis of "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism". Snippets:

The accusation of treason is one of the most grave that can be made against a citizen of any country. Article III of the U.S. Constitution specifies that, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."

In latching onto a powerful word with a specific legal meaning and casually leveling the charge as a blanket accusation against a wide array of people (as she did with "slander"), Coulter is attempting to smear virtually anyone who disagrees with her views on foreign policy as treasonous. "Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy," she writes on the first page of the book. "This is their essence."

At times, Coulter portrays liberals and the left as engaged in a grand conspiracy to destroy the United States. "Betraying the manifest national defense objectives of the country is only part of the left's treasonous scheme. They aim to destroy America from the inside with their relentless attacks on morality and the truth."

Other times, she insinuates that disagreeing with her about U.S. policy toward various hostile foreign countries or taking any action that could be construed as favorable to those countries' interests is equivalent to treasonous support for those countries. Democrats "opposed anything opposed by their cherished Soviet Union," she writes. Later, she adds that Democrats "would vote whichever way would best advance Communist interests."

"Liberals are always against America," she writes. "They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down."

Of course, Coulter must engage in a complicated set of rhetorical tricks to accuse liberals of "fifty years of treason." The book is primarily focused on the controversy over real and alleged Soviet espionage in the post-World War II era. We can certainly stipulate that Soviet agents who worked covertly inside the United States government did commit treason. But Coulter broadens the term to include virtually every liberal, leftist, Democrat or member of the media.

After a long examination of this so-called "McCarthy era," Coulter jumps to Vietnam and the period since, and tries to lump liberals of today in with those of the past due to their supposed sympathy for the enemy and attempts to undermine U.S. foreign policy. Yet in contrast to the well-documented presence of Soviet spies in the U.S. government in the 1930s and 1940s, she provides no evidence that any liberals have taken actions intended to aid foreign enemies in the periods since (with a couple of possible exceptions). Instead, she attempts to leverage the McCarthy era to tar contemporary liberals and Democrats using guilt by association and innuendo, implying that any opposition to U.S. foreign policy is de facto treasonous.

"Democrats' gutless pusillanimity has emboldened America's enemies and terrified its allies," she writes. During Vietnam, liberals "rolled out all the usual arguments for treason. . . . The traitor lobby was ascendant and very loud. The media did its part, too, sowing fear and trying to undermine patriotism." In Coulter's world, it's simply not possible that anyone could have had a legitimate reason for opposing the Vietnam War.

After a history of the Reagan presidency and the American victory in the Cold War, she moves on to the post-9/11 era, writing that liberals nearly "went stark raving mad at having to mouth patriotic platitudes while burning with a desire to aid the enemy" and "clamored for America to be defeated" in Afghanistan.

I would never spend the $ to buy such trash (thus putting my hard-earned money into Coulter's pocket) but I surely will check the book out of the library because I am a big fan of fiction and fantasy.