In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interests of sedition.
Typically, sedition is considered a subversive act, and the overt acts that may be prosecutable under sedition laws vary from one legal code to another. Where the history of these legal codes has been traced, there is also a record of the change in the definition of the elements constituting sedition at certain points in history. This overview has served to develop a sociological definition of sedition as well, within the study of state persecution.
The difference between sedition and treason consists primarily in the subjective ultimate object of the violation to the public peace. Sedition does not consist of levying war against a government nor of adhering to its enemies, giving enemies aid, and giving enemies comfort. Nor does it consist, in most representative democracies, of peaceful protest against a government, nor of attempting to change the government by democratic means (such as direct democracy or constitutional convention).
Sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power. Treason is the violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or state, giving aid to enemies, or levying war against one’s state. Sedition is encouraging one’s fellow citizens to rebel against their state, whereas treason is actually betraying one’s country by aiding and abetting another state. Sedition laws somewhat equate to terrorism and public order laws.
Courtesy of http://stfuhypocrisy.tumblr.com/post/35992280941/people-think-that-the-republicans-are-afraid
The above quote comes from an episode of THE ED SHOW with ED SCHULTZ on MSNBC aired November 16, 2012. You’ll find the quote a little over halfway down the transcript, but it’s all there.
Special abilities are often called gifts. Some folks might consider it mind reading, but I was apparently gifted with an ability to match patterns. I solve jigsaw puzzles with a speed and drive that excludes all else. So here’s my pattern-matching gift to you, courtesy of my curse. But it doesn’t take a genius (and I’m not that), to see where we are headed.
What isn’t clear at this point is what the revolution will look like when it happens, but happen it will, so long as the American Aristocracy continues to hold firm to the belief that wealth entitlement is a right in this country, and that sharing is not necessary to the overall health of the country. The French learned this lesson, but not before tens of thousands lost their lives, including the king and queen.
Robert Reich knows it. The Sequester and the Tea Party Plot, posted on February 28, 2013, includes this damning statement regarding the Tea Party: “Sequestration grew out of a strategy hatched soon after they took over the House in 2011, to achieve their goals by holding hostage the full faith and credit of the United States – notwithstanding the Constitution’s instruction that the public debt of the United States “not be questioned.””
Ezra Klein of the Washington Post’s WONKBlog posted this on March 2, 2013: This is why Obama can’t make a deal with Republicans. He knows it too.
So do the folks at Mashable: Viral Video Shows the Extent of U.S. Wealth Inequality
The links at the end of the video are here, for those of you who just can’t stand to see these claims without the statistics to back them up:
- http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
- http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf [modified slightly, because the actual link took you to an introduction to the study and the study’s the really important part.]
- http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/
- http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/economy/ceo-pay/index.htm
Finally, there’s this, from UNCOMMON SENSE: TO NAVIGATE UNCHARTED WATERS OF 21ST CENTURY LIFE:
The Tea Party is amazingly good at pointing the fingers elsewhere and laying blame, and for that I suppose they will be remembered as a modern equivalent to Robespierre’s single-minded, blood-thirsty Mountain, the organization that finally brought down the French Aristocracy, except for one key point, and a major point at that: The Tea Party does NOT represent you.
Read that again.
The Tea Party does NOT represent you.
They never have. They, and many Tea-leaning Libertarians, believe in the very fiber of their beings, that this country was not formed to do any of the things outlined by Jefferson and the rest of the men who drafted and signed on to the Declaration of Independence.
Quite the contrary. They wish to restore the country to its original aristocratic roots, to ensure that those who have achieved all their wealth, the modern-day First Estate, remain exactly where they are, and that the rest of us should be reduced to the serfs we are.
To achieve their goals, they will do anything they can to subvert the standing administration, because they were all elected legally to their positions.
Our founders could not have foreseen the Gerrymander. They could not imagine automatic weapons. They had no concept that our country’s ruling class might one day look different from them: white males of western European descent. It never, ever, occurred to them that we might one day look down the gun barrels at each other, and fight to the death to protect wealth we have NO chance of ever achieving ourselves. They drive their own Grand Bargain, in which the poor simply die off and the wealthy walk over their bones.
I am not exaggerating.
I have lost friends who knew me casually out of the political context because they are certain I am absolutely dead wrong and unable to listen to reason. They imagine themselves at the forefront of the debate, because the rhetoric must mean them when it comes to giving up wealth. I don’t have many friends whose incomes exceed the six figure mark, and the vast number of them don’t have a lot of patience for the stupidity playing out in Washington and in the back rooms of local political offices across the country. The core reason people have walked away, aside from my inability to keep my politics to myself, is the fundamental assumption that I am somehow after their guns, their religion, their way of life.
I represent the Ebil Liberal.
No matter how many times or ways I can illustrate where these ideas are coming or the inherent problems with them, there is simply no telling them they are wrong, and that the country will do just fine on its current trajectory.
Just today, I saw a post that says, essentially, the Ninth Amendment entitles me to do whatever I want, because my rights already exist. (Okay, that’s not what he said, but what’s sauce for the gander…) It is, in essence, the same divine right by which the French Aristocracy died. You can do whatever you want, as long as I can do whatever I want, and no rule of law can touch me because my rights trump your laws.
I will freely admit that I have never, ever understood the Libertarian mind. I don’t think I ever, ever will. This isn’t just a fight to keep and bear arms, or to protect the safety net, or to ensure domestic tranquility. This is the ultimate in brinksmanship. This time, I don’t know that the United States of America can handle the stress. With hundreds of thousands laid off on top of an already fragile economy, there’s simply nowhere else to go. Relying on the sweet hereafter as an alternative simply isn’t enough.
We are less than two years from the next round of elections, but that could well be too late. It certainly won’t be enough to clear the Senate, and will change all too little in the House.
Buckle up. We’re in for a bumpy year.