Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Has Google committed treason? No.

By Donald Sensing


"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort" -- US Constitution, Art. III, Section 3.

I have a very narrow view of what constitutes treason - because the Constitution does also. It is the only crime defined in the Constitution, and was done deliberately to narrow what treason means.

"Levying war" means actually bearing arms against the US or taking part in an armed force that is conducting combat against the US. Google is not doing that.

"Adhering to their enemies" is directly related to what it means to levy war. "Enemies" does not mean "economic or military competitor" absent actual use of armed force between that competitor and the US. China is a rotten-to-the-core government and has overtly declared that it is working for superpower status superior to the United States, but it is not legally our enemy.

Google should be brought to rein, very, very sharply. But the Constitution has been more than politically corrupted enough without treating Google as actually treasonous. As Glenn Reynolds commented on my FB post of this story,
Donald, you’re right, but that currency has already been debased by all the bogus talk of treason in connection with the bogus Russian collusion charges.
That is true, and it is all the more reason to call a halt now. Otherwise, any president from now on will use treason as an excuse to go after corporations or groups or persons that s/he just wants to.

James Madison, Federalist 43:
As treason may be committed against the United States, the authority of the United States ought to be enabled to punish it. But as new-fangled and artificial treasons have been the great engines by which violent factions, the natural offspring of free government, have usually wreaked their alternate malignity on each other, the convention have, with great judgment, opposed a barrier to this peculiar danger, by inserting a constitutional definition of the crime, fixing the proof necessary for conviction of it, and restraining the Congress, even in punishing it, from extending the consequences of guilt beyond the person of its author.
I have no doubt that Google is acting contrary to the interests of the United States in its dealing with the Chinese government. But it's not treason and should not be treated as if it is.

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