Book Review: No Treason by Lysander Spooner
Every American Should Read This Every July 4th. Particularly For the 250th July 4th. The United States Declaration Of Independence is truly amazing reading when you get past the first few words virtually everyone knows ("We, the People,...") and into the list of grievances against King George... mostly because the current United States government is guilty of almost literally every single thing its Founders said were reasons to separate from the government of their era and start anew.
In this collection of essays written just after the end of the American Civil War, when so many of his neighbors in Boston and the Northeast generally were calling their Southern brothers "traitors", Spooner proclaims that there can be "no treason" because the Constitution is of "no authority" over anyone who did not actively agree to it.
In a flowing yet at times repetitive - along the lines of the chorus of a song or perhaps a call-and-response style chant - prose, Spooner - a practicing lawyer of his day in addition to being a natural law philosopher - lays out his reasoning as to why these men cannot possibly be traitors in a manner that rings just as true here at the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence as it did in his era in the years leading up to its 100th anniversary. With so many proclamations of so many political opponents of whoever is speaking being "traitors", Spooner, in just four dozen pages, lays bare why there is no such thing and hasn't been in nearly 200 years at minimum.
No matter your politics, this *should* make you think. It *may* make you want to defenestrate this text, but with it being such a light volume page count wise, it may not fly so well. So don't bother. Just sit back with the beverage of your choice and ponder his words as the rockets burst in the air this week. Maybe you'll find you agree with him more than you thought you did. Maybe you'll find that there is something worth preserving in the Constitution after all. Either way, you'll come out of this text a more well rounded and even complete American for at least having seriously considered the words of this text. At bare minimum, you'll now understand the common-in-Anarchic-circles sayings of "A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years" and the final lines of this text "But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist."
Very much recommended.
This review of No Treason by Lysander Spooner was originally written on June 28, 2026.
Also, just because I think Google's Gemini AI did an excellent job with this, here is a cover it created for the book:
