There are a number of websites that invite readers to invent new needed words. It is so much fun that my wife submitted her own … for collectors … it is “acrapulate.” (If you want to know more about it, check out the website, www.acrapulate.com). However, I am unable to find a procedure to delete unused words. (I mean, have you seen the size of the hernia-producing unabridged dictionary?)
And the first word I propose we delete from the American lexicon is “treason.”
It is clearly an anachronistic word with little or no meaning in modern society. Government officials give up military secrets. Newspapers publish sensitive data. Names of our undercover agents are put on the Internet. Soldiers propagandize against the war on terrorism. Despite it all, the word “treason” is hardly ever mentioned – and when it is those who raise its scepter are trashed in the public media.
Many of the disclosures sure look like the law book definitions of treason. However, no betrayal of oath or action against the interests of the United States is now brought before the tribunals of justice.
Perhaps it was the Pentagon Papers disclosure of the Vietnam War era that placed treason under the protection of the First Amendment. Maybe we do have the right to scream fire in a crowded theater.
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