Benedict Arnold Was NOT a Traitor...........

[louis c]

...........he was just setting up a back channel to Great Briton.

<snip>In 1780, Benedict Arnold was given command of West Point, the American fort on the Hudson River in New York (and future home of the United States Military Academy, established in 1802). Arnold contacted Sir Henry Clinton, head of the British forces, and proposed handing over West Point and its men. On September 21 of that year, Arnold met with British Major John Andre and made his traitorous pact, in which the American was to receive a large sum of money and a high position in the British army. However, the conspiracy was uncovered and Andre was captured and killed. <snip>

Link:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/benedict-arnold-american-traitor-born

[PubliusEnigma]

1. #BenedictDonald

[Achilleaze]

2. Bennie would be a Biggie with the KGOPee Cabal nowadays

Knowing that Bennie was trying to score a bigly boodle of cash for himself, today's republicans would totally understand and approve. It's in perfect keeping with their republican "family values," as exemplified by their beloved role model, Comrade Casino, the esteemed republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief.

[Cartoonist]

3. He became a conservative

The Revolution was actually a civil war. The liberals wanted the monarchy out, while the American Tories wanted to keep the status quo. Benedict fell in love with a Tory's rich daughter. Like Nancy turned Reagan into a conservative, so did Benny's new love. I guess he needed money to impress her.

[louis c]

5. Still, he created a back channel.............

.............using the technology of the times.

It's certainly treason to try to collude with an adversarial foreign power to undermine your own country for personal gain.

[Igel]

4. He was loyal to the territories and the population

but only in the way he saw fit.

He kept his loyalty, as he defined it.

He upheld his "country's" honor, in self-defined ways that he and some others that he agreed with approved of.

One man's traitor is another man's patriot.

Arnold was merely on the losing side; had Washington been on the losing side, he'd be the traitor. At least that's a deeply cynical, "might makes right," view. It's the view expressed when we talk about the "wrong side of history," because history, for the most part, has no moral arc. It has a technological arc, it has a centralizing arc. These extend back millennia. The "moral arc" has a time depth of perhaps 150 years, perhaps 200 years, around 3% of recorded history and far less than one percent of the history we can plausibly infer.