Homegrown Terror

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Eric D. Lehman. Homegrown Terror

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Homegrown Terror

This book is a 2014 selection in the Driftless Connecticut Series, for an outstanding book in any field on a Connecticut topic or written by a Connecticut author.

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Perhaps because “treason” has been so rarely used in its actual legal context, the word has become diluted by common use over the centuries. Political duplicity is almost laughable it happens so often, but that does not stop partisans from calling a politician “traitor,” or “Benedict Arnold,” for that matter. A quick search reveals thousands of merely political comparisons to Arnold in hundreds of newspapers, especially during elections and other tense moments of national disunity, everyone from John Adams to Theodore Roosevelt, from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama. Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were both compared to Benedict Arnold in the same magazine, only one year apart.23

Despite Thomas Jefferson’s fervent prosecution of Aaron Burr for the crime, he said himself, “Real treason is rare.”24 Unfortunately, we have watered down “real treason” to the point where the word, if not the legal definition, is nearly useless for the purpose the writers of the Constitution intended. And the use of Arnold’s name in so many lesser cases has diluted the seriousness of his own treason. That’s why it is necessary to change the conversation about Arnold, and focusing on his “homegrown terror” attack on New London is a clear and effective way to do that. Whatever we judge now in calmer times, Arnold’s treason and his subsequent attacks had a huge effect on the national psychology of early America. Those effects are worth exploring.

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