“I hate Bill Clinton,” my now 17-year-old nephew Michael told me (when he was only eight). It was an offhand remark by a child, who today is far more politically savvy than many adults twice his age. But his comment then surprised me.

“Why do you hate President Clinton?” I asked him.

“Because he’s a bad president,” Michael responded.

Though I wasn’t a fan of Clinton either, I corrected him quick; telling him that Clinton was president of the United States. I also explained to him that though we all have a right – even an obligation – to challenge elected officials whom we believe are erring in a manner violating the common good; it is ungentlemanly and unladylike to speak disrespectfully or contemptuously about the office or the office-holder. It can also be dangerous for the country, though I didn’t get into that with my nephew at the time.

Michael didn’t actually know whether or not Clinton was a “bad president,” or why that might have meant he was supposed to “hate” him. It was just something he picked up from an adult and misconstrued in his own little mind.

Of course we adults do talk about the man in the Oval Office, but it should be done in the spirit of tactful discourse and substantive debate; and – when in time of war – without encouraging and emboldening any real or potential enemies. Those four words, “in time of war,” should not be taken lightly.

The vitriol leveled against Clinton during his administration was tasteless, to be sure. But the attacks against Bush (a commander-in-chief in time of war) and his chief lieutenants, have not only soiled the grounds of common decency; they may well have crossed over from general dissent into the realm of sedition.

Of course, the 1st Amendment is precious to us all, dissent has value, and a charge of sedition today does not have the same punitive bite it once had. As a lawyer friend explained to me, one man’s free speech is another man’s sedition, and vice versa.

So when does dissent become sedition? Are they one in the same? What’s the difference between sedition and treason? These are questions I’ve bandied about recently, as our politically polarized nation has split even further on issues of Iraq and the global war on terror, Iran, nuclear proliferation, port and border security, immigration, race relations, procedures for collecting intelligence, and then 360-degrees back to Iraq.

My 1996 Webster’s unabridged defines sedition as “incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government” and “any action, especially in speech or writing, promoting such discontent or rebellion.” I also opened a 1903 copy of Ogilvie’s Student’s English Dictionary, and found sedition to be, “such offenses against the state as have the like tendency with, but do not amount to treason.”

Both definitions are a mouthful, so let’s boil them down: Sedition is the act of inciting discontent against a government. It parallels treason, but does not quite rise to that level.

Now let’s look at some examples of “speech or writing” designed to incite discontent:

One of the latest is an article from the online edition of Vanity Fair, wherein veteran journalist Carl Bernstein calls for “Senate hearings on Bush, Now.”

Another is a Yahoo! News exclusive by cartoonist Ted Rall, who – after reading Seymour Hersh’s latest in The New Yorker – shrieks, “DON'T IMPEACH BUSH. COMMIT HIM.”

Then there is Congressman John Conyers and his recent call to investigate and possibly impeach the president. Conyers does so with a laundry list of allegations against Bush including, “encouraging and countenancing torture.”

Of course, politicians love to incite and inflame. But what have we devolved into when a U.S. Congressman may – with all of his influence, with impunity and without any substantive proof whatsoever – suggest that a wartime president is responsible for torturing human beings?

Conyers (the same guy who called for President Reagan’s impeachment for the 1983 invasion of Grenada) is a hero at – and has written for – antiwar.com, the infamous e-rag whose writers have referred to the Secretary of Defense as “Don ‘Personally Involved in Torture’ Rumsfeld,” and the Bush administration as “having an empire so corrupt and murderous that many folks are considering impeaching and removing the president who lied us into war and claims unlimited authority to wiretap, kidnap, torture, and murder whomever he likes – his lawyers even insist that the ‘commander in chief’ has the ‘inherent’ and ‘plenary’ authority to crush a child's testicles to get at the boy’s father.” Continued...