Comment by thaumasiotes
3 years ago
> In this case they're arguably scamming the government out of money, but that can hardly be compared to the crime knowingly aiding a known adversary.
I don't really get your argument. In this case they're intentionally crippling a capability of the Polish state. There does not appear to be any particular intended beneficiary (other than themselves), but any and all enemies of the Polish state foreseeably benefit when the Polish state's abilities are curtailed.
Furthermore, the general understanding of treason does not require aiding a known adversary - it requires attacking, injuring, or otherwise betraying whoever has authority over you.
> I'm disturbed by the trend of calling anything vaguely against the national interest as "treason".
I guess what I'm saying here is that this involves something that is contrary to the national interest in very specific ways. The connection is not vague.
If I'm an American and I arrange to kidnap Joe Biden and hold him for ransom, does that sound like "treason" to you? All I want is money. But someone might think there's an important difference between the effect I'm trying to produce and the effect I actually do produce.
>If I'm an American and I arrange to kidnap Joe Biden and hold him for ransom, does that sound like "treason" to you? All I want is money. But someone might think there's an important difference between the effect I'm trying to produce and the effect I actually do produce.
No, because those crimes typically get prosecuted as terrorism, not treason. Even leaking state secrets rarely get prosecuted as espionage rather than treason.
But an ideological belief that nothing must ever be called treason, regardless of what happened, does not make for a compelling argument that particular actions do not constitute treason. To make that argument, you'd need to have a definition of treason that included something.
>But an ideological belief that nothing must ever be called treason, regardless of what happened, does not make for a compelling argument that particular actions do not constitute treason.
I'm not sure how you read what I wrote, and rounded that off to "an ideological belief that nothing must ever be called treason, regardless of what happened". I don't have a ready definition for you to examine, but based on the examples it's pretty clear that executive and/or judiciary don't share such an expansive definition of treason as you. Moreover, aren't you engaging in the opposite? Is any crime that's vaguely against the state "treason"? [see my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38540252]
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