Georgia Senate defeats Fonda resolution

Actions have results. They often have consequences. Sometimes those consequences are short-lived.

Sometimes, however, the actions are so heinous that the consequences continue regardless of repentance and penance, regardless of how much 'good' one does later.

Sometimes people use the freedom we have in this country to serve others. Occasionally there are people whose familiarity is so well known to all of us for one reason or another that they will live on forever in our minds, in our history.

Some things people are remembered for are never able to be reconciled. It is why parents remind their children to protect their good name. It is why Scandal is so very evil.

Awhile back in Texas, there was a woman on Death Row, Karla Faye Tucker who became well known for having changed tremendously while in prison. It was part of the reason so many did not want her to be executed in the end.

I had also hoped, not only because of her conversion, but also because I am not pro-death penalty, that her sentence would be commuted to Life.

Karla Faye Tucker will forever be remembered as 'The Pick Ax Murderer" in Texas, but she will also be remembered for her conversion. She was forgiven by the Lord when she repented. She was forgiven and visited by the brother of her female victim.

She did good things in prison.

Yet nothing she did in prison would ever change the fact that she had been responsible for the murder of two human beings; had been been convicted, sentenced to death by a jury of 12. She would never have been released from prison, even if the death penalty had been commuted by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Instead, they turned her down 16-0, and this decision was upheld by the Supreme Court.

You can find other examples in all of history of this.

Our actions have consequences. Our choices affect others.

One that really bothers me is someone that used her own fame and her father's name to commit what I consider to be Treason.

Had she been tried, and found guilty, she, too would be in prison. Or possibly, sentenced to death.

Treason:

Article III, Section 3, of the federal Constitution sets forth the definition of treason in the United States. Any person who levies war against the United States or adheres to its enemies by giving them aid and comfort has committed treason within the meaning of the Constitution. The term aid and comfort refers to any act that manifests a betrayal of allegiance to the United States, such as furnishing enemies with arms, troops, transportation, shelter, or classified information. If a subversive act has any tendency to weaken the power of the United States to attack or resist its enemies, aid and comfort has been given.

The Treason Clause applies only to disloyal acts committed during times of war. Acts of disloyalty during peacetime are not considered treasonous under the Constitution.


Treason: Giving aid or comfort to the Enemy in time of war. We were at war.

The evidence of her crime was plastered all over the world, but especially in the nation of our then enemy, North Vietnam.

Those who try to justify actions like hers claim that it was not a DECLARED war. Regardless, our guys, and many of our girls, were serving over there. Many were dying, many more were injured, and our nurses were seeing things that many wish they had never witnessed.

Our POW's were suffering, too, for many years. They were suffering and imprisoned while 'Hanoi Jane' climbed up on the anti-aircraft gun and posed for the cameras, and still there when she returned home and told the world that our POW's were being treated 'humanely'.


In 1988, Jane Fonda apologized on 20/20.

The Wall Street Journal (August 3, 1995) published an interview with Bui Tin who served on the General Staff of the North Vietnam Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. During the interview Mr. Tin was asked if the American antiwar movement was important to Hanoi's victory. Mr. Tin responded "It was essential to our strategy" referring to the war being fought on two fronts, the Vietnam battlefield and back home in America through the antiwar movement on college campuses and in the city streets. He further stated the North Vietnamese leadership listened to the American evening news broadcasts "to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement."

Treason: Giving Aid or comfort to the Enemy in time of war.

We were at war.

Alan Colmes on last night's Hannity and Colmes asked if the fact that she has done so much good should not erase her past actions.

Some actions have lasting consequences, and no matter HOW MUCH PENANCE one may do, it cannot take away the effects of what was done. Just as Karla Faye Tucker could not return her victims to life, and could not escape the consequences of her actions, Jane Fonda and others who aided the enemy during the Vietnam War cannot, either.

When I had learned that Georgia Senator Steen Miles was sponsoring a resolution to honor Jane Fonda for her 'charitable' work and contributions to Georgia, I was again reminded of her history, and I was angry.

Apparently others were also. After Jane Fonda had called from out of the country and asked that the resolution be withdrawn, Georgia Sen. John Douglas forced a vote because he and others wanted it on the record.

The resolution was defeated soundly by a vote of 38-1, with even Sen. Miles voting against it.

"I can think of no living American who is less worthy of this honor," Republican Sen. John Douglas declared. "She is as guilty of treason as Benedict Arnold and Tokyo Rose."

Our actions have consequences. Those consequences last forever. Even in the reality of repentance and forgiveness, even when amends are made, the results are there forever.

Jane Fonda can be appreciated by many privately perhaps. But she can never take back the fact that she gave aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war.

To honor her publically from a gov't body for anything she has been doing, now or in the future is no different than it would have been for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to not only stay the death penalty, but to then go further, and release Karla Faye Tucker from prison after she had repented, asked forgiveness, and became a model prisoner.


Related Tags: Georgia, Jane Fonda, Consequences