If Cantor is siding with a foreign leader to undermine the efforts of a current administration in a matter of US foreign policy, he should be charged with
sedition.
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.
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We should be careful with this sort of thing. This does fall far short of 'sedition' IMO.
I suspect Cantor is an immoral whore, happy to corruptly give Israel any blank check to hurt anyone they want with Americans giving them financial and political cover.
And whether it's for one set of misguided, corrupt reasons or another isn't really the issue.
And it's a very serious matter for our leaders to be so beholden to any group whether it's big pharma or the military-industrial complex or the Israel lobby.
But having said that, our leaders need the right to oppose the administration.
If a political leader said "The North Vietnamese are being wronged by being tortured and killed in their effort to rid their country of cenuries of foreign occupation, and I support ending funding for our war and support a peace process to end the war", is that treasonous to LBJ? If they called for war crime charges against LBJ for aggressive war, for torture, for chemical warfare, is that treason?
If leaders had said the Sandanista goverment had the right to be free of Reagan's terrorist attacks to try to force them out of power, if they had wanted criminal charges for his violating the law against funding Contras and things like Iran-Contra, is that treason? How about opposing the US invasion of Grenada based on corrupt reasons and lies?
If the leaders of Germany had opposed Hitler for his aggressive war policies, do we think they would be 'traitors'?
We do not and should not have a monolithic policy set by the President forced on all elected leaders. If they're wrong to oppose him, we have the ballot box.
But we need to have independant, distributed power to allow the opposition of corrupt or wrong policy. Vietnam was in large part driven to end by the opposition of Congress.
It might have gone on a lot longer if the congressional opponents could be charged.
A real example that I think probably crosses the line but is little known and was not prosecuted was Nixon's apparentl subversion of the nation's peace agenda in Vietnam.
There is evidence that while LBJ was negotiating peace, Nixon sent word to the South Vietnamese that he'd reward them if elected, if they refused to sign the agreement.
To the government's shock, after they had the North Vietnamese government progressing on peace, the South Vietnamese refused to cooperate for no apparent reason.
That's beyond the right to oppose the president on poilicy, and probably a criminal subversion of our nation, as were the Reagan administration illegal activities.
And I'd think there was a good amount criminal in our Vietnam policies, too, including launching the aggressive war. But at least we had the pretense of an 'ally to defend'.
Some people yawn and say 'stop criticizing acts of the US and let it do what it wants to our enemies. Who cares who it kills and how.' I say these people are immoral, bad citizens.
Their 'argument' often tries to say the only choices are 'do any immoral and criminal acts that get us power, or we will be conquered by evil nations'. Wrong apology for evil.
The US needs to be great as well as have whatever power it has. It has to have some moral standards it doesn't just give lip service to.
It can't be a 'thug' nation for any selfish reason able to demonize and kill anyone who simply won't sign over the rights to their country by calling them names.
Edit: now, the issue of if Cantor is supporting a foreign nation's agenda over the US *for money* does raise other questions and can be more criminal if accepting funding from another nation - a reminder why that is illegal, creating leaders here who support the other nation over the American people - and another reminder is how *we've* used pressure including money to 'buy off' foreign leaders to support our agenda over their nation's people. But since the money might well be from *American* supports of Israel, and it's the American Jews who are putting Isreal ahead of the US, that complicates things.
American citizens have that right. If you want to say you love France so much you want the US to commit to her defense and give her billions in military equipment for no reason but that you care more about her welfare than you do about the cost to the US, that is your right as a citizen to have that opinion, to try to persuade others to agree, to give money to campaigns who agree. You might be terribly wrong and damaging to the US, but it's your right as a citizen, rather than having the government say 'sorry, you can't have that opinion and push it.'
We're *supposed* to say "look at those people pushing the bad agenda, get rid of them", and when the voters do not do that, 'we get the government we deserve'.
But it is one more step in reminding us the danger of money in politics - and IMO we have a real issue with the excessive level support for Israel, as shown by, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out, both party's presedential candidates going to the Israel lobby to pledge US commitment to protecting only one OTHER nation than the US, Israel, policies that go far beyond just 'protecting Israel from threat from her neighbors' and extend to a lot of protecting from wrongdoing, including the whoring out of our UN veto against pretty much every other nation in the world, for any bad things they do.
You can suppot Israel, and still draw these lines, still note how bad her neighbors are, and so on. Saying 'we won't support a wrong act by Israel' isn't hating Israel or loving her enemies.
Citizens have the right to demand bad policy, but single-minded organizations should not be able to defeat the broader American people - our system should not allow that, as it bans foreign donations.
Cantor, if he's as bad as suspected, is not the problem, just a symptom, the problem being when citizens have a wrong agenda they have a right to have, and our system allowing monied corruption.
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