As readers of this blog know, I’ve been quite critical of people calling others “traitors” simply because they disagree with them about the war or about foreign policy. There should be plenty of room in civil debate for good-faith disagreement about what’s good for the country. Moreover, decent Americans can still sometimes consider the legitimate interests beyond the American national interest — for instance, they might oppose an attack on some country because of a concern about the country’s innocent citizens, whether or not the attack is in the interests of America’s citizens. It’s neither fair nor productive to reduce legitimate policy disagreements to accusations of lack of patriotism, or, worse still, treason?
But if this is true, then what’s with all this that we’ve been hearing about “Benedict Arnold CEOs”? There are lots of hard and interesting questions about how American businessmen should deal with international competition. Some think that outsourcing is on balance bad for America, others think it’s good. Some think that businessmen should focus first and foremost on the interests of America generally, others that businessmen should primarily serve the interests of their shareholders (within, of course, the boundaries of the law) — or that outsourcing helps both shareholders and, ultimately, America generally, since without it we’d lose our competitive edge and thus have to lay off even more people. Reasonable minds can differ on this. But there’s no justification for waging this battle through slurs and insults, and allusions (even if clearly hyperbolic) to a man whose name has become a snonym for “traitor.”
But if I’m mistaken, and “Benedict Arnold” is permissible political hyperbole to be used against people whose economic policies you think undermine the American national interest, then why isn’t “traitor” permissible political hyperbole to be used against people whose foreign policy you think undermines the American national interest?
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