You’re entitled to your opinion. However, most constitutional scholars would strongly disagree.

The Constitution defines treason very specifically, and for good reason. The Founders were aware of how easily the concept could be abused. In our country, it has to be an “overt act.” Merely expressing an opinion doesn’t count, and shouldn’t. Neither of the two dissenting opinions in the 1989 Supreme Court case brought up treason, nor is it conceivable that they or any other justices would have done so.

Your analysis lumps together two things that shouldn’t be confused: “dissing America” and criticizing the people in power. Colmes was celebrating the latter, not the former.

I love America. And one of the reasons I do is that it understands freedom of speech more broadly than many other democracies in the world do. I think it’s wrong, for example, that the Holocaust denier David Irving was prosecuted for his views. That’s a typical European mode of thinking. As a Jew, I feel more comfortable living under a government that ignores Holocaust denial. We cause far more problems by seeking to quash views we hate than by simply ignoring them.

Celebrating the right to dissent doesn’t mean celebrating every individual dissenting opinion. If you want to disagree with anti-war protesters, that’s fine. If you want to quarrel with some of their methods, that’s also fine. But you don’t have to shut them up. That would be truly un-American.

It reminds me of a joke I used to hear back in the ’80s. An American says to a Russian, “The great thing about America is that you’re allowed to curse Ronald Reagan.” The Russian replies, “What’s so great about that? In Russia, you’re also allowed to curse Ronald Reagan!”

Lack of patriotism is manifest when you make your own people your enemy, as Sheehan and her supporters clearly have. And that morally speaking is treason.

I leave the legal issue of whether to prosecute treason as treason to the superior legal minds in this discussion.

David Limbaugh is rather gentle with his criticism of the far left and their sentiments toward dissent:

the far left has a limited comprehension of the role of dissent, the concept of patriotism and their ostensible interrelationship.

Liberals confuse the right to dissent with the act of dissenting. My liberal friend Alan Colmes recently said, “I think protesting is actually very pro-American. It’s what a democracy really is.”

No, Alan, protesting against America is not “very pro-American.” Being pro-America is pro-American. Defending one’s right to protest is celebrating America’s freedoms. But the act of dissing America while exercising those freedoms is not pro-American.

It is not the act of dissenting that makes this country great. There is nothing noble in trashing America and her leaders on foreign soil, especially as we prepare for war against a foreign country. It is disgraceful. Anti-war protestors are not exhibiting their patriotism when they dissent; they are exercising their freedoms – and there’s a big difference.

The right to dissent – included in the First Amendment – is part of what makes America great (but far from the only thing). That right carries with it a duty of responsibility and a measure of accountability, such as incurring the scorn of the many who do love this country. You may dissent to your heart’s content, but the substance of your statements will not be exempted from scrutiny merely because you are exercising rights we consider sacred in America. You are not fooling many people by wrapping yourself in the flag of dissent, trying to pretend that it, too, is red, white and blue.

Patriotism is not about worshipping dissent. It is about love of country. Since when are expressions of contempt considered outpourings of love? It is about appreciating America’s uniqueness, including her unparalleled freedoms, not about casually dismissing America’s sovereignty in favor of one worldism or love poems about “our common humanity.”

Patriotism is not “talking across national boundaries” as part of “a global debate about this war,” as the Nation’s Bruce Shapiro lamely characterized Hollywood’s anti-war drumbeat. Nor is it “pledg(ing) to make common cause with the people of the world to bring about justice, freedom and peace,” as Hollywood leftists and others did in their “Not in Our Name” diatribe.

It is not patriotic for anti-war protestors to burn and rip up flags, flowers and patriotic signs that residents had erected on a fence along Whittier Boulevard in California to commemorate those lost when this nation was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. And it’s not patriotic for anti-war types to try to censor the unmistakably patriotic song of country star Darryl Worley about 9-11, “Have You Forgotten?”

By no means are all those opposed to war against Iraq being unreasonable. But those extreme leftist anti-war protestors are different. They have every right to belittle this nation as it prepares for war, but they shouldn’t expect to be exalted for it.

I posted about the flag burning debate a few days ago. I’m sure a lot of bloggers did.

Based on a book I read about the history of the United States flag, I think it is unlikely that the Founders would have wanted flag burning outlawed, though I’ve seen a rumor on a couple of sites saying that they did. Aside from the First Amendment issue, the extreme reverence that Americans today attach to the flag simply did not exist when the Constitution was written. That reverence would not appear until around the time of the Civil War.