Treason, by Ann Coulter

ByABC News via logo
June 23, 2003, 2:14 PM

June 24 -- Conservative author Ann Coulter offers her own examination of liberal America in her latest book, Treason.

In her new book, Coulter, who is also a political analyst and an attorney, argues that liberals side with the enemy when America is under attack. Coulter writes "Liberals attack their country and then go into diarrhea panic if anyone criticizes them."

Read an excerpt from Coulter's latest book, Treason.

Fifty Years of Treason

Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don't. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence. The left's obsession with the crimes of the West and their Rousseauian respect for Third World savages all flow from this subversive goal. If anyone has the gaucherie to point out the left's nearly unblemished record of rooting against America, liberals turn around and scream "McCarthyism!"

Liberals invented the myth of McCarthyism to delegitimize impertinent questions about their own patriotism. They boast (lyingly) about their superior stance on civil rights. But somehow their loyalty to the United States is off-limits as a subject of political debate. Why is the relative patriotism of the two parties the only issue that is out of bounds for discussion? Why can't we ask: Who is more patriotic Democrats or Republicans? You could win that case in court.

Fifty years ago, Senator Joe McCarthy said, "The loyal Democrats of this nation no longer have a Party."(1) Since then, the evidence has continued to pour in. Liberals mock Americans who love their country, calling them cowboys, warmongers, religious zealots, and jingoists. By contrast, America's enemies are called "Uncle Joe," "Fidel," "agrarian reformers," and practitioners of a "religion of peace." Indeed, Communists and terrorists alike are said to be advocates of "peace."

Liberals demand that the nation treat enemies like friends and friends like enemies. We must lift sanctions, cancel embargoes, pull out our troops, reason with our adversaries, and absolutely never wage war -- unless the French say it's okay. Any evidence that anyone seeks to harm America is stridently rejected as "no evidence." Democratic senators, congressmen, and ex-presidents are always popping up in countries hostile to the United States -- Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Iraq -- hobnobbing with foreign despots who hate America. One year after Osama bin Laden staged a massive assault on America, a Democratic senator was praising bin Laden for his good work in building "day care centers." At least we can be thankful that in the war on terrorism, we were spared the spectacle of liberals calling Osama bin Laden an "agrarian reformer."

The ACLU responded to the 9-11 terrorist attack by threatening to sue schools that hung god bless america signs. Is the ACLU more or less patriotic than the Daughters of the American Revolution? Public schools across the nation prohibited the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance. Is it more patriotic or less patriotic to prevent schoolchildren from saying the Pledge of Allegiance? University professors called patriotic Americans "naive" and described patriotism as a "benign umbrella for angry people."(2) Is it more patriotic to love your country or to ridicule those who do as "naive" and "angry"? These are not questions impenetrable to human logic.

Liberals want to be able to attack America without anyone making an issue of it. Patriotism is vitally important -- but somehow impossible to measure. Liberals relentlessly oppose the military, the Pledge of Allegiance, the flag, and national defense. But if anyone calls them on it, they say he's a kook and a nut. Citing the unpatriotic positions of liberals constitutes "McCarthyism."

In the 1988 presidential campaign, Vice President George Bush pointed out that his opponent Michael Dukakis had vetoed a bill requiring students to begin their day with the Pledge of Allegiance. Liberal heads spun with the dark reminders of the McCarthy era. Dukakis instantly compared Bush's dastardly trick of citing his record "to Sen. Joseph McCarthy's Red-baiting during the 1950s."(3) Despite this slur against his patriotism, Dukakis said, "The American people can smell the garbage."(4) At least sophisticated Americans could smell the garbage. As one journalist said of Bush's unwarranted reference to Dukakis's record, it was intended to "rile up" ignoramuses in the American populace: the "folks who don't know any better," whose inferior "education or experience has not taught them that the right to speak out is the rudder of this great big boat we call America."(5) The only people whose "right to speak out" is not part of this great big boat we call America are Republicans who dare to mention that a Democrat vetoed the Pledge of Allegiance. Free speech is a one-way ratchet for traitors. While journalists assailed Bush for creating an atmosphere of intolerance for those who "object to patriotic oaths," they didn't mind creating an atmosphere of intolerance toward those who support patriotic oaths.(6)