A presentation from "Censorship and Official Lies: The End of Truth in America?" This event was co-hosted by the Mises Institute and the Ron Paul Institute, and recorded in Lake Jackson, Texas, on April 13, 2024. Full Written Text (Audio link is above): Over the past three years, the word “sedition” has again become popular among regime agents and their friends in the media. It’s certainly not the first time the word has enjoyed a renaissance. It’s frequently employed whenever the ruling class wishes us to become hysterical about various real and imagined enemies, both domestic and foreign. This time, the regime’s paranoia about sedition was prompted by the Capitol Riot in January 2021, when we were told that Trump supporters nearly carried out a coup d’etat. Since then, regime operatives have frequently referred to Trump supporters and Trump himself as seditionists. Yet, out of the approximately 850 people charged with crimes of various sorts, only a very small number have been charged with anything even close to treason or insurrection. Rather, most charges are various forms of infractions related to vandalism and trespassing. However, because these charges have to do with the regime’s sacred office buildings, the penalties are outrageously harsh compared to similar acts, were they to occur on private property. For a small handful of defendants, however—the ones the Justice Department has most enthusiastically targeted—the federal prosecutors have brought the charge of “seditious conspiracy.” Why not charges of treason, rebellion or insurrection? Well, if federal prosecutors though they could get a conviction for actual rebellion, insurrection, or treason for the January 6 riot, they would have brought those charges. But they didn’t. What they did do is turn to seditious conspiracy, which is far easier to prove in court, and is—like all conspiracy charges in American law—essentially a thought crime and a speech crime. Seditious conspiracy is not actual sedition, or rebellion, or insurrection. That is, there is no overt act necessary, nor is it necessary that the alleged sedition or insurrection actually take place or be executed. What really matters is that two or more people said things that prosecutors could later claim were part of a conspiracy to do something that may or may not have ever happened. Moreover, the regime now routinely employs other types of conspiracy charges for prosecuting Americans supposedly guilty for various crimes against the state. At the moment, for example, Donald Trump faces three different conspiracy charges for saying that the 2020 election was illegitimate. As we shall see, purported crimes like seditious conspiracy are crimes based largely on things people have said. They are a type of speech crime. Now, some may ask how that is even possible if there is freedom of speech in this country. Contrary to what a naïve reading of the First Amendment might suggest, the federal government has never been especially keen on respecting the right to free speech. The federal government has long sought tools to get around the First amendment, and one of them is seditious conspiracy. Now, the term seditious conspiracy contains two pieces. There’s the sedition part, and there is the conspiracy part. Let’s explore both parts of this in a bit more detail to see what we can learn about this inventive way the regime has developed to silence those who question the legitimacy of the American state. Seditious Conspiracy Was Invented to Get Around Limitations on Treason Prosecutions From the very beginning, federal politicians have sought ways to create political crimes above and beyond the Constitution’s very limited definition of treason. This began with the Sedition Act of 1798, and continued with the creation of the Seditious Conspiracy law in 1861, and carried on through to the Sedition Act of 1918, and the Smith Act of 1940, and a plethora of various types of “conspiracy” laws used to punish many different types of antiwar and dissident activities since then. All of these laws, involve restrictions on freedom of speech, and open up suspects to punishments for saying things. The reason why federal politicians believe they need extra sedition laws on top of treason can be found in the fact that the framers of the Constitution defined treason in very specific and limiting terms: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. Note the use of the word “only” to specify that the definition of treason shall not be construed as something more broad than what is in the text. As with much of what we now find in the Bill of Rights, this language stems from fears that the US federal government would indulge in some of the same abuses that had occurred under the English crown, especially in the days of the Stuart monarchs. Kings had often construed “treason” to mean acts, thoughts, and alleged conspiracies far beyond the act of actually taking up arms against the state. Treason could have been anything the king didn’t like, and it how you end up with a situation in which St. Thomas More was executed for treason simply for refusing to say that the king was head of the church. By contrast, in the US Constitution, the only flexibility given to Congress is in determining the punishment for treason. Naturally, those who favored greater federal power chafed at these limitations and sought more federal laws that would punish alleged crimes against the state. It only took the Federalists ten years to come up with the Alien and Sedition Acts, which stated: That if any persons shall unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States … or to impede the operation of any law of the United States, … from undertaking, performing or executing his trust or duty, and if any person or persons, with intent as aforesaid, shall counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination, whether such conspiracy, threatening, counsel, advice, or attempt shall have the proposed effect or not, he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor. Note the references to “intent,” “counsel,” and “advise” as criminal acts so long as these types of speech are employed in a presumed effort to obstruct government officials. In the twentieth century, we will again see this type of language designed to ensnare Americans in so-called crimes of conspiracy. A great many Americans—some of whom who still took the radical liberalism of the revolutionary era seriously—saw the Sedition Act for what it was. A blatant assault on the rights of Americans, and an attack on freedom of speech. Thanks to the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 the Sedition Act was allowed to expire, Then, for sixty years, the United States government had no laws addressing sedition on the books. But the heart of the 1798 Sedition Act would be revived. As passed in July 1861, the new Seditious Conspiracy statute stated that if two or more persons within any State or Territory of the United States shall conspire together to overthrow, or to put down, or to destroy by force, the Government of the United States, or to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States; or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States; or … prevent any person from accepting or holding any office, or trust, or place of confidence, under the United States. . . . Shall be guilty of a high crime. Note the crimes here are not overt acts like “overthrowing the government” of “delaying the execution of a law.” No, the crime here is conspiring to do something about it. That is, saying things about it to another person. That is what constitutes “conspiracy” here. Now, some people who have a rather benign view of the state might think, well, people shouldn’t conspire to do bad things. Well, in real life, conspiracy as prosecuted, does not necessarily look like a group of bad guys getting together in a dark room and explaining how they’re going to blow up some government building. That’s Hollywood stuff. In real life, people can be found guilty of conspiring with people with whom they have never been in the same room, or with whom the "conspirator" expressed any actual violent intent. We’ll return to this, and this is just something to keep in mind, whenever looking at government conspiracy laws. Given the timing of the seditious conspiracy legislation that I just read—i.e., in 1861, following the secession of several Southern states—it is assumed that the legislation originated to address alleged Confederate treason. This is not quite the case. The legislation did enjoy considerable support from those who were especially militant in their opposition to the Confederacy. However, Rep. Clement Vallandigham of Ohio—who would later be exiled to the Confederacy for opposing Lincoln’s war—supported the bill precisely because he thought it would help punish opponents of the fugitive slave laws.” Congress had initially become serious about punishing “conspiracies” not in response to Southern secession, but in response to John Brown’s 1859 raid at Harper’s Ferry. Thus, there was support for the idea in the South before the war. Soon thereafter, however, the Confederate secession and fears of rebellion helped enlarge the coalition in favor of a new sedition law. The new sedition law represented a significant expansion of the idea of “crimes against the state.” Senator Stephen Douglas, the bill’s sponsor understood this perfectly well, stating You must punish the conspiracy, the com
