The execution of Lady Jane Grey, who served as de facto Queen of England for nine days in 1553 before relinquishing the throne to Mary Tudor. Queen Mary later charged Lady Jane Grey with high treason.

None dare call it treason

The first time I ever heard the phrase, none dare call it treason, was when it appeared as the title of a best-selling book, published in 1964, written by John Stormer. The title was taken from a famous epigram by Sir John Harington, who was a witty and erudite figure at the court of Elizabeth I. Harington wrote: “Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

An interesting aside is that Harington also is credited with being the inventor of the flush toilet. It’s hard to imagine anything that has made a greater impact on the world than that, but it is his enlightening quip on treason that caused his name to be well known in history.

The message of Stormer’s book was that the United States government was in danger of being conquered by a well-defined group of people who are hostile to the country’s traditional political, cultural, and social values and were bent on changing them to conform to a modern, high-tech version of the old-world model of feudalism. The new version is called collectivism and includes a ruling elite in control of a subservient working class, comparable to what used to be called serfs.

The conquest, however, was not by soldiers from other nations. Rather, they were American citizens who were using the democratic process to infiltrate the power centers of America. One-by-one, these centers of influence were being captured in a quiet and gradual conquest-from-within that not one person in a thousand was able to detect.

The significance of the book’s title, therefore, was profound. The conquest of America had advanced so far that the conquerors were already in place at the highest levels of government and now were in charge of deciding who the traitors are. Stormer was able to show convincingly that the defenders of the old traditions were already classified as enemies of the state. The word treason is not far from that.

All of this came to mind when I prepared the first story in our news column about the newspaper editor in Turkey who was arrested and charged with treason for telling the truth about his government’s role in delivering weapons to ISIS in Syria. Turkey, of course, is a long way from here, but Washington, DC, is not. It is in Washington that people at the highest levels of the government are calling for the public hanging of Edward Snowden for exposing the unconstitutional and unethical surveillance activities of the NSA.

If you ever considered becoming seriously involved in the defense of liberty, the time to get moving is running out. If you don’t know how to do that, Freedom Force is a good place to begin.

G. Edward Griffin
2015 November 27