In 1795, graffiti was less art, more literature.

“Damn John Jay! Damn everyone who won’t damn John Jay! Damn everyone that won’t put lights in his windows and sit up all night damning John Jay!”

Jay had just returned from London with his infamous treaty. The United States would settle its old debts, Britain would leave its frontier forts, and the two countries would trade instead of shoot. 

George Washington signed it. The sensible man figured a young republic with no navy, no money, and barely an army shouldn’t pick a fight with the biggest empire on Earth over what the kids today would call “feels.”

Of course, that didn’t stop The Great Unwashed from losing their minds.

One newspaper editor called Jay “the arch traitor” and invited his readers to seize him, drown him, burn him, and flay him alive.

In Philadelphia, a mob put his effigy in the pillory, guillotined it, set its clothes on fire, and blew it up with gunpowder.

In New York, Alexander Hamilton stood up to defend the treaty, and the crowd pelted him with rocks. Aaron Burr would’ve been saved a heap of trouble if any of them had decent enough aim.

One effigy carried a sign: “Come up to my price and I will sell you my country.” British gold, they said. Mad King George had bought the American emissary!

The good-humored Jay joked that he could walk from Boston to Philadelphia at night by the light of his own burning effigies.

His treaty kept America out of a war it would have lost. It bought two decades of peace and trade. The frontier filled up, and the merchants got rich.

Hold that thought while we visit the Journal’s comments section.

The Journal Versus Its Own Readers

On Tuesday night, the Journal’s editorial board warned Trump might sit down with Putin and Xi to end the war in Ukraine. Oh, the horror!

The Board called it “Yalta 2.” They fretted about credibility, alliances, and the “post-1945 global order.” I disagree with nearly every line of its nonsense, but that’s a column for another day.

As so often happens, the comments section is where the gold is.

I hasten to remind you that The Journal is the house paper of American capitalism, read by people who own things, or so I thought. Its readers are furious at the editorial board, not for being too hawkish, but for being too soft.

“Tactical impulse,” the board wrote of Trump. The readers accused the board of “dancing around.” By my count, “traitor” or “treason” had appeared over a dozen times before I got tired of scrolling.

Russian asset. Russian puppet. Poodle. Useful idiot. Munich 1938. Molotov-Ribbentrop. The 25th Amendment. Impeach.

“VOTE BLUE!” shouted in the obligatory capital letters was surely penned by the only Journal subscriber with a nosering.

It was as if someone hacked the New York Times comment section and pasted the blue-haired vitriol among more civilized folks. Just for the hell of it.

One sage pontificated that Trump is in it for “Russian gold.” It’s been a full 230 years since Jay’s chalking, and the whiners still haven’t changed their script.

The best comment of the lot got exactly one upvote. A reader named John had the temerity to write, “Policy disagreements aren’t treason.”

The nerve!

What Treason Actually Is

The Founders had watched English kings hang men for disagreeing with them. So they wrote treason into the Constitution and made the target tiny on purpose.

Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution defines it thus: levying war against the United States, or adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort. Two witnesses to the same overt act, or a confession in open court.

No other crime gets its own definition.

They did that because they knew how the word was misused.

The Founding Fathers, who wanted neither conflict nor entangling alliances with any country, knew the definition couldn't be wider. If the man who wants to end the war is a traitor, the warmongers don’t have to explain anything. His motives are the argument. The debate ends before it starts, and the warmongers win by default.

It’s convenient for warmongers.

The Quiet Part, Out Loud

One honest commenter mourned a “wasted opportunity.” America “could have used Ukraine as a proxy to cripple Russia and isolate China in economic decline, while we prospered.”

That was the real aim of America’s policy, but the editorial board would never print it.

Ukraine was never about Ukraine. It was a cheap way to bleed Russia with someone else’s sons. Nearly five years and over $150 billion dollars later, Russia isn’t crippled, the front hasn’t moved, and the plan has failed.

Turning this stupid war into an open-ended Western proxy campaign wasn’t statesmanship, and wanting it to stop isn’t appeasement.

Ukrainian men are dying while the demands for more bloodshed rain down from the peanut gallery. Continuing the conflict only protects the people who sold the war. Because if the war was a mistake - I’m looking at you, Joke Biden and Boorish Johnson - then somebody had to make it. But if ending the war is treason, well… then, we can’t have that, can we?

Yalta, Munich, and Other Things That Aren’t Happening

The commenters reached for Munich. The board reached for Yalta. Both are lazy analogies. 

Yalta was the winners dividing the spoils after the war was decided. Munich was a strong man carving up a weak neighbor.

Let’s check the scoreboard:

• Vlad is still grinding it out in Ukraine.
• The Donald is bogged down in Iran, a Vietnam of his own making.
• Emperor Pooh Bear is watching two tired men and calculating his next move.

This is closer to Vienna in 1815, when Europe's victorious but exhausted powers discovered that winning a war and constructing a durable peace were two different things.

The Congress of Vienna gave Europe 40 years without a general war. Of course, the men who signed it were called cowards.

There’s a legitimate argument against negotiating over Ukraine's head, but calling diplomacy treason isn’t it.

Useful Idiots, Then and Now

In 1987, Ronald Reagan signed the INF Treaty with Gorbachev. Howard Phillips, a conservative activist from Reagan’s own side, called him “a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda.”

Four years later, you couldn’t find the Soviet Union on the world map.

Apparently, the only true patriot is the man who wants the war to go on, watching safely from his couch, with other people’s children doing the fighting. I, myself, have never understood the attraction to ordering poor Appalachian kids to die abroad, serving the fictitious “national interest.”

John Jay retired to his farm in Bedford, New York, and died there in 1829 with the frontier settled and the ports full. Nobody remembers the colonial era’s graffiti artist.

Wrap Up

Here’s what you do when one of your virtue-signaling in-laws announces at Thanksgiving that wanting peace in Ukraine is repeating Kremlin propaganda.

First, ask them what the war was for. Make them say “proxy.” Enjoy the facial contortions their cognitive dissonance creates.

Second, ask them what three more years buys in square miles. They won’t have a number, even if they could find Ukraine on a map. Give them an extra serving of pumpkin pie if they know the length of the shared Russia-Ukraine border. (Answer: 1,200 miles.)

Third, ask them to read Article III of the Constitution on their iPhone. They’ll discover, perhaps for the first time, that treason is an overt act, not a feeling.

While they’re there, for your further amusement, ask them to hit the search function and type in “democracy.” That it’s not in the document opens up a fantastic can of… cranberry sauce.

Then pass them a basket and ask how they like “dem apples,” knowing you’re using the same argument the Father of the Country would’ve used.

The hoi polloi called George Washington a traitor, too. History ridicules them.