Sedition Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Sedition defined in most judicial contexts (as specific countries’ laws do vary) is any action, speech, or writing that seeks to undermine a government by a person or group from inside the territory of that government’s authority. Often these laws are passed during times of war when threats to a government’s authority are a paramount concern to the rulers, but they also have been passed and enforced to eliminate political opponents and quell dissent. It is important to note that the associated offense of treason is similar to sedition in that both are seen as threats to the existent governmental authority; however, treason involves working directly with a government’s foreign enemies, and sedition is working for an overthrow from the inside. Of course, these legal boundaries are often not as clear when governments are threatened, and police, prosecutors, and judges blur lines that are clearer during more reasonable times.

So why have governments instituted sedition laws? The simple answer is that they want to protect their power. Inherent to most forms of government is the desire to protect against political forces that are interested in challenging the legitimacy of the present ruling structure. For most of recorded history, governments chose to use direct physical force to prevent dissatisfied persons from speaking out against their governments and rallying others to their causes. So, for example, Roman citizens who thought the emperor was not giving enough grain to the plebs certainly could have walked into the forum and said as much to anyone that would listen. However, it is likely that that person would end up with not much life left to live. Yet, as brutal as rulers have been in the past to those individuals interested in challenging their governments, today’s ruling governments often use different means of silencing dissent.

As mentioned, governments have passed many sedition laws during times of crisis as a legal structure for squashing domestic dissent when the country is involved in a conflict with a foreign enemy. Two examples from the United States are relevant to this point. The first comes from the period of World War I (1914–1918) when the United States passed the Sedition Act of 1918 to stamp out dissent among critics of U.S. policy. Many social and political critics of the Wilson administration were prosecuted for their public statements.

Another example is that of a nurse who worked at a veterans hospital in New Mexico. In 2005, Laura Berg criticized the Bush administration’s foreign policy in a public letter, and she was investigated by her superiors for possible seditious actions. The investigation was ended after press reports emerged, and it was clear that she was protected by her first amendment right to free speech.

Each of these instances indicate a common thread among most attempts to administer sedition laws in democracies— the difficulty of balancing the right to free speech and the protection of the state from domestic insurrection. This issue is not problematic in overtly totalitarian and authoritarian states, but in countries that claim to allow citizens to express themselves without fear of suppression, retribution, and violence, it is much more difficult to manage. What often happens in such democratic societies is that they revert to authoritarian means of maintaining their power at the time that such action is deemed necessary, and then they may apologize later for such actions after the crisis has long since passed. Governments tend to err on the side of protecting the state from overthrow rather than on the side of protecting free speech that may lead to political revolution and the overturning of the previous political order.

Many countries have similar histories with the problem of sedition. With recent attention turning to antiterrorism in countries around the world, many governments have struggled to achieve the balance of protecting their present political order with a commitment to hearing from all political parties. As history has demonstrated, antiterrorism is but the latest context for this continuing effort to find a political equilibrium between a democratic, responsive government and constant political turmoil.

Bibliography:

Miller, John Chester. Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts. New York: Little, Brown, 1951.
Stone, Geoffrey. Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime: From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism. Boston: Norton, 2005.

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