A remarkable thing happened Friday.  Shortly after Senator Lindsey Graham delivered a totally out of control  (and totally out of character) ranting tirade against the Democrats on the judiciary panel, two senators, one from each party, got together, met, and then communicated with the entire committee, all of whom arrived at an agreement.  In unison.  Without dispute.

It was remarkable, I say, because these differing factions had come to agreement based upon a discussion between two people, one from each faction.  That discussion, I am told, was a reasoned discourse.  Whatever may come of the discourse, the fact that it happened is, in my mind, a huge event, perhaps even, one might hope, the beginning of a return to reasoned discourse from the contentious and devious conduct of both sides that has been characteristic of our political arena for far too long.

This, however, might be a good time to ask the question:  just what is “reasoned discourse”?  Every time I think of reason, the image of Mr. Spock sneaks into my head.  We call his kind of thinking “cold logic”, and there is a reason why we call it “cold”.  Logic, by itself, like all science by itself, lacks an element crucial to human discourse.  It obviously lacks emotion, but that is not the key missing element.  I put it to you that the key missing element is what I will call for the moment moral impetus.  Morality may be loosely defined here as concern for others, and any discourse that lacks that concern is trivial, irrelevant, all but meaningless.  Discourse owes its very existence to our concern for others.  Reasoned discourse then is an exchange of concerns governed by the rules of reason.  What is reason?  Not just pure logic, but in some way a recognition of what is real.  When you get right down to it, reason is the recognition of things as they actually are.  To think that there is a horned monster under your bed is unreasonable because there are no horned monsters.  You may still check under the bed, but the reason for checking has nothing to do with reality.

Reasoned discourse is, then,  a discussion between two people concerned about others which is conducted within the scope of reality.  To put that in English, those who engage in reasoned discourse share their concerns for others, but they “keep it real.”  That is what the judiciary panel did on Friday, and we should all hail it as a giant step for American politics.

What an interesting world it would be if we all committed to reasoned discourse.  No more calling each other idiots.  No more attacking each other’s motives.  No more seeing the world through a perverted set of glasses.  None of this will happen overnight.  It will happen in bits and pieces, and it will only happen if you and I start it.  To start, think about that Friday exchange.  Remarkable.

I am a lawyer.  I have been trying cases for over forty years.  I cannot count the number of witnesses that I have prepared.  I tell each of them that their testimony is far more about credibility than it is about information.  So, I tell the witness, the best thing you can do to preserve your credibility is to give a direct answer to a direct question.  There are, I tell the witness, two things that a witness does that ruins his or her credibility.  The first is to not answer the question but to go on and on in some other direction.  The second, which is, aside from lying is the worst thing a witness can possibly do, is to argue.  Why?  Because it communicate to the listener that the witness doesn’t believe that a straight answer is not enough.  Nothing makes a witness look like a liar more than the witness arguing.

I listened to the testimony of Dr. Ford and of Judge Kavanaugh on the radio.  Later I saw bits of the testimony on television.  With one exception, in my entire experience I have never heard a worse witness than Kavanaugh.  He consistently did both of the things that indicate a lack of credibility.  He never answered a direct question with a direct answer.  Never.  Worse, he didn’t just argue.  He snarled.  He yelled.  He ridiculed.

Here is my single observation.  Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony was so bad that I find myself unable to believe a word he said.  He was evasive beyond virtually every witness I have ever had.  He was argumentative in the extreme.  By the time he got around to a substantive answer, it did not answer the question asked, and it sounded totally rehearsed.  He was, in sum, patently incredible.

I do not know what he did as a high schooler or college student.  No one ever will except those who were there.  What I do know is that we are putting on the Supreme Court a person who is dishonest and a person who has demonstrated himself absolutely incapable of being the impartial jurist that we so desperately need on the court.  The majority will likely succeed in putting him on the court, but in doing so they will risk doing more damage to our tripartite democratic government than anyone, including Trump, has ever done.

Someone once observed that the genius of the founding fathers was to create a system which, in the hands of the competent, is excellent, and in the hands of the incompetent, is adequate.  People like Trump and Kavanaugh are putting that observation to the most severe of tests.

The case of Brett Kavanaugh is not the first time the country has been faced with the question of conduct disqualifying a potential appointee.  Clarence Thomas, of course, but many others.  The hard question is what to do with, for or to Mr. Kavanaugh.  I here offer the thoughts of an old white male.

First, the charge being leveled against Kavanaugh by his first accuser is very serious, so serious that, had he been found guilty of it at the time, he would, just about now, be getting out of prison.  Second, assuming arguendo that he did what he is accused of, the reason he was not charged with the crime, and the reason why his victim did not report the crime, was because, back in the 80’s, every woman in America knew that if she reported the crime she would be the one treated as a defendant.  “Wearing a skirt, were you?  OHHHHHH, A SWIMMING SUIT!  AT A DRINKING PARTY!  WELL DON’T WE KNOW WHAT YOU WERE LOOKING FOR!”

So, third, I would not be surprised if he did it, and I am not surprised that she didn’t report it.  The question, then, is:  should her report have any effect on his appointment to the court?  I have a slightly off-key opinion.  It is not the incident that should drive our response.  It is, rather, Kavanaugh’s reaction that should matter.

Imagine the following.  On hearing of the accusation, Kavanaugh calls a press conference and says, “I have no recollection of the events described by Professor Ford.  I did drink at under-age parties while in high school, and I may have drunk so much that I did this awful thing and I was so drunk that I can’t remember it.  If, therefore, I did it, then this is the first I have heard of it, and I am profoundly sorry for having caused Professor Ford so much grief.  I have lived my entire adulthood trying to respect the rights of others, and I can assure you that I have the deepest respect for the rights of others and particularly the rights of all women to be free from sexual harassment, sexual discrimination, and most of all sexual assault of any kind.”

Imagine, I say, that Kavanaugh had said something like this.  I would imagine that all but the extreme would have said that he was appropriately contrite if in fact he did such things, and that he should, therefore, be allowed a vote on his ascension to the Supreme Court.

Here is the problem.  He didn’t say that.  Instead, he said that it never happened.  He categorically denied that he was at the party (a problem since no one can identify exactly what party we’re talking about), that he had never engaged in such conduct, etc.  His handlers, while assuring the public that no such thing ever happened, refuse to allow any kind of investigation into the alleged events.  They refuse even to allow the alleged witness to the events to testify, despite the fact that that witness seems to confirm that it never happened.

So I think Mr. Kavanaugh stands on shaky ground,  shaky largely in part because of his own conduct.  That being so, the obvious solution is for Mr. Kavanaugh to announce that he is withdrawing his name from consideration for the appointment.  Why?  In the interest of justice.  To save this country from yet another tortuous conflict.  To remove from the Supreme Court even the appearance of a shadow on one of its members (like the shadow that has hung over Clarence Thomas for all his time on the court).  To save his family further anguish and embarrassment.  Et cetera, et cetera.

There is, or at least should be, no room on our Supreme Court for politics.  By withdrawing his name, Kavanaugh will at least be making a step toward reducing what odor of politics there is.  As painful as it would no doubt be for him, it is the only decent thing to do.

Elections are less than a month away.  The TV and radio are full of political ads, mostly ugly.  Digital analysts are busy telling politicians what you — you — like and dislike.  Money flows like the flooded rivers of North Carolina through digital media.  Advisors are paying gigantic sums to learn what prejudicial buttons their political clients should push.

What is missing in this picture?  You and I.  No one, pretty much absolutely no one, is asking us to sit down and think out exactly what it is that we want.  No one is taking the time to explain things like gerrymandering and tariffs and taxation and debt.  No one is having an objective discussion of the best plan for health care or a safe environment or education.  Those who are running for office are being told that such objectivity doesn’t matter, or, worse, is actually antithetical to their chances for gaining office.  Feed the prejudices, they are told, and you can do all your goodie goodie stuff once you reach office, which is another lie.

Whose fault is this?  Everybody’s.  The real question is:  what are you doing about it?  If you are anything like me, busy with living, the answer is likely:  nothing.  Well, that’s not good enough.  Do you want this country run on prejudice or  on sound policy?  The choice is up to you, and the way to choose is to let the politicians know what you want.  That’s right.  You have to do that.  How?  Write to all the candidates about whom you are concerned.  Give them a list of what you want to see out of your government.  Tell them you don’t give a damn whether they hug babies or hand out food to the homeless.  Hand them your list, and tell them your vote depends on whether they agree to that list.

Here is my list.

1. I want taxes raised, particularly on the wealthy, in such a way that our deficit gets paid down.
2. I want a policy of military spending that saves the efforts to protect our country from foreign assault and that otherwise withdraws from foreign entanglements.
3. I want a full-forward commitment to reduce the impact of our country’s activities on the environment and that encourages other countries to follows suit.
4. I want a plan of universal basic health care that reduces the per-person cost of medical care, through the elimination of subrogation and the collective bargaining power of the nation against the manufacturers and distributors of medical products.
5. I want an end to gerrymandering and the creation of an objective, non-partisan group of people to design voting districts based on publicly announced objective principles.
6. Well, I want a lot of other stuff that nobody will give me anyway, so I won’t list any more.  Most of all, I want us, you and me, to vote in people based on real, achievable political goals, and not on the grounds of what my viewing habits are or even what the color of my skin is.

So.  Make a list.  Yours will likely differ from mine.  That’s great.  If your list wins, I’ll live with it.  But at least we will have voted people in for real reasons.  Go get ’em.

The history of parties is a bit of a rollercoaster.  In fact, the very idea of parties in America was condemned by our first president.  Parties, however, have been with us almost from the beginning.   What makes it a rollercoaster is that the reason for two parties has changed throughout our history.  At first it was those who wanted a strong federal government versus those who wanted to limit federal control.  That latter party was the Republican party, ruled by Thomas Jefferson.

Somewhere over the years, the Republicans became those who wanted more federal power and the Democrats became the titular protectors of states’ rights, although it was really done to protect, first, slavery, and then the suppression of the rights of minorities.  Then Kennedy and Johnson came along to flip the whole thing, with Democrats becoming the party of minority rights and the Republicans those touting state’s rights.

In our times, however, nothing is quite as clear.  The South is neither as financially nor as socially conservative as it once was, and the North is not as singlemindedly committed to liberal views as it once was.  More importantly, what once defined the Republican party — anti-debt, pro individual rights, pro international alliances — is now apparently replaced with an odd combination of the purely self-serving.  It has endorsed tax reductions for the wealthy while actually increasing federal spending (although not on communal needs like health care or education).  Most of all, it sits silent while a person so incompetent as to endanger the whole country embarrasses us all on a daily basis.  Meanwhile the Democrats sit, out of power and with nothing to do but grouse about their impotence.

So we’re not exactly separated by fiscal conservatism or states’ rights  or even the rights of African-Americans.  So what is it that divides us?  Well, caricatures for sure.  Republicans ridicule the Democrats as loving abortions and wanting open borders and crime.  Democrats ridicule Republicans as self-absorbed know nothings who do nothing but shame themselves by either remaining silent about, or by even endorsing, the madness that is Donald Trump.

Beyond mere caricature, however, there really is one thing that is becoming more and more clear about the division between the two groups.  Let’s call them for the moment the Ins and the Outs.  (Let us also hope that those two titles remain relevant only until November.)  The difference, it seems to me, is between interest in the common good and unalloyed self-interest.  How, for instance, can one explain the difference in commitment to reversing the growing environmental disaster?  Or how explain the refusal to improve the increasingly ugly picture of health care in America?  More and more, it seems to me, the Ins appear to support only those things that feather their own nests regardless of the damage done to their fellow citizens, much less the citizens of the globe.

There are still true conservatives, reasonable people with the interests of the nation sincerely at heart.  They have been forced to tolerate the Trumpian outrages in order to effect some things they consider critical — the Supreme Court balance, reduction of federal regulation, etc.  To some great degree, they have achieved those things.  They have, however, paid two huge prices.  First, they have destroyed their own credibility.  Second, and consequent on the first, they have likely reduced themselves to a generations-long minority.

That will place a huge burden on the Democrats.  They will have to impose some pretty serious burdens on the nation — taxes to pay down our intolerable debt, regulations to improve the environment, new rules on health care to finally provide universal coverage and to control medical costs.  And more.  But if the Democrats do one thing, they must rout from the national worldview the primacy of self-interest.  Nothing is more destructive of the American ideal of the inalienable rights of all humans as a national policy based on self-interest.

The deadly disease that divides us is the commitment to self-interest over the needs of our communities.  Trump is no more than a personification of that disease.  It is we who need to reject that disease, and doing so will do no less than save American democracy.

Rudy Giuliani’s most recent bonehead statement, “Truth isn’t truth”, was quickly covered up his subsequent explanation that he was talking about he said/she said situations.  The record of comments by those in the present administration, however, make it clear that, for them, everything is he said/she said, and therefore, in the Trump world, there really is no such thing as truth.  Like Humpty Dumpty, these folks can make words mean whatever they choose them to mean.

There is, however, a deeper bit of insight here.  We often put labels on things to cover up a deeper meaning or a deeper problem.  One of those terms is racism.  When you think about the idea of racism, it is ridiculous on its face.  Who in his or her rational mind would make any decision about the value of a person based solely on the color of that person’s skin?  I get very tan in the summer.  Will anyone in his or her right mind hold me inferior until my tan fades?  Color is, well, skin deep.  Using it as a measure of a person’s quality is as ridiculous as judging people by the color of their eyes or the length of their fingers or the size of their feet.

But if it’s not that, what is racism?  Why would a large part of our population delimit or disqualify another part of the population based solely on skin color?  I suggest that it rests on something someone taught me a long time ago.  There are, my teacher said, two ways to increase your perception of your own self-worth.  The first is to actually do things of merit.  The second is to disparage others so as to put yourself higher.

A comedian who is a recovering alcoholic once told the following story.  He was taken to the hospital in constraints because of his drinking.  He was on a gurney and had straps on his arms and his legs.  While he was in the hospital, the staff brought in a second person, also in the throes of alcoholism, also in restraints.  This second person, however, had five straps, the fifth being around his neck.  The comedian said he looked at this second persona and yelled, “Loser!  You have a neck restraint, and I can move my neck anywhere I want.  I have options!”

I think that’s pretty much it.  We do this a fair amount.  We put people down for some meaningless reason only so we can give ourselves a façade of higher quality.  The other is inferior because of height or weight or perceived beauty or nature of dress or place of residence or level of education.

Or color of skin.  Or religious beliefs.  Or political persuasion.  Nonsense, all of it, but widely practiced because it is so much easier to degrade others than to improve oneself.  Racism isn’t racism.  It is just another aspect of the evils of mindless self-interest.  what a world it would be if we could get rid of that little human flaw.

In these days, when reasoned discussion has given way to name calling, one of the most popular names thrown around is “socialist.”  The word is meant by those who hurl it something equivalent to “Communist”, and it carries with it thinly veiled innuendos of military control and a general suppression of individual human rights.  Most of all it suggests that you are not a real American unless you are a laissez-faire capitalist.

There are many errors in this kind of thinking (if, indeed, we can call it thinking).  The greatest of those errors, however, the one that threatens the very existence of American democracy, is to confuse the difference between economic theories and political theories.  A friend of mine, a good and bright friend of mine, once said that America is a capitalist country.  That statement is absolutely wrong, and it perfectly illustrates the confusion.  He was very, fundamentally wrong, probably even more wrong than is Jeff Session’s hideous statement that America is not an idea but a nation state.  If America is not an idea, it is nothing, and it is doomed.

So let’s revisit our basic civics.  The United States was founded on a set of ideals.  They are:  a) that all human beings are born equal, and b) every human being has some basic inalienable rights.  To be an American is to hold these truths to be undeniable.  If you don’t hold these truths to be true, you are not an American.  So, anyone reading this who does not hold these truths to be undeniable, please leave the room.

These truths are at the core of what it means to be an American.  They define us.  They are our political foundation.  That being true, all the rest of our issues involve the means of best achieving these ideals.  No matter what position I might hold regarding how to run the economy, how to run the military, how to educate our children, how best to provide health care, how best to take care of our elderly, these are all merely discussion among people committed to a common goal on how best to achieve that goal.

So, for instance, here is a question:  how can we best promote the inalienable rights of all human beings in the operation of our economy?  The various answers to that question constitute what we might call a continuum.  Some think that we promote the rights of others best by giving them the greatest possible freedom with respect to what they earn and how they spend or save it.  Others think that we promote the rights of others by having everyone contribute to a common fund to pay for common needs.  Between those two positions there is an endless variety of proposals.  These are, not political positions, but economic positions.  The first economic position is called capitalism, and the second economic position is called socialism.  So socialism is the combining of private funds into one public fund to provide a benefit for all.

And that is the point.  We are all socialists in this sense to some extent.  You don’t believe that?  Oh yeah?  Do you agree with using public funds to operate the military?  Do you agree with using public funds to take care of parks and streets?  Do you agree with public funds to pay for education or provide basic care for our elderly?  If you do, you are a socialist, that is, you are willing to contribute to a common fund to provide for a universal need.

There is, of course, an important rational discussion to be had here.  Should we use common funds for health care?  Should we spend more or should we spend less on such things as education?  These, and many more topics, are good and healthy topics for discussion.

All of that ends when, instead of rational discussion, we choose to hurl names.  Even the names themselves lose their meaning.  And this is one of the major sins of our times.  We don’t think, we just accuse.  When we do, we reject even the possibility of rational discussion.  And when we do that, we end up abandoning those precious ideals that should identify us.

So anyway, you’re a socialist.  What am I?

I recently wrote to the president of a local college about the possibility of presenting a course on the foundation of human value.  The college is private and is run by a Catholic religious order.  I am appropriately trained and degreed to teach such a course.

I received a letter back from the president a few weeks later, and I was stunned to learn from that letter that this college, formally identified now as a university, does not teach any courses in philosophy or theology, and that apparently there was no room in its curriculum for a course on human value.  Not long afterward, I received from a friend a magazine article indicating that so-called institutions of higher learning around the country had minimized, or even eliminated, such courses.  The apparent reason was lack of interest.  Fewer and fewer students were signing up for such courses and were instead concentrating on science and technology, particularly digital technology.

There is an old saying:  not to philosophize is to philosophize.  What it means is fairly simple.  We all operate on first principles.  We all, every day, make decisions about how we will conduct ourselves, what goals we will seek and  what means we will use to achieve those goals.  We choose careers.  We choose relationships.  We choose matters of daily health and diet and grooming and other living conditions.  We do all of this on some basis, and that basis constitutes a philosophy, that is, a set of first principles upon which we make such decisions.

One might think that it would be a matter of the highest importance to examine that set of first principles, to identify them and decide what principles will guide us.  After all, these principles are the basis upon which we make the most important decisions in our lives.  What career will we pursue?  Will we raise children?  How will we relate to those around us?  Pretty much every choice we make as to how we live our lives is based on these principles.

Two things are true about the process of examining our first principles.  First, it is a very difficult thing to do.  Why?  Primarily because, to do it properly, you have to put aside all your prejudices, your biases, those unexamined assumptions on which you have previously operated.  You have to, as it were, stand back from yourself, critique yourself, undergo a radical, and often painful, self-examination.  You have, in a sense, to let go of a fundamental anchor in your life, to critique, and perhaps doubt and cast aside, those principles that were likely drilled into you from childhood.  Painful, even dangerous.

Second, and on the more positive side, the vast majority of people operate on first principles that define what is best about being a human.  They live lives of care and consideration for those around them.  They do their best to serve their local communities.  It is for others more insightful than I to determine how they came to such first principles, but by their actions the vast majority of people demonstrate a dedication to the noblest and most truly human of first principles.

If that second point is true, then why undergo some excruciating self-examination?  Why examine our guiding principles when most of us get them right without such an examination?  Answer:  because without such an examination, it is too easy to be led astray.  Rather than undergo such a painful self-examination, it is far easier to simply commit to the thinking and directions of some authority.  It is far easier to accept the directions of a religious authority or a political authority or even a business authority.  Witness, for instance, the sincere commitment of the people of North Korea to their leader or the commitment of Muslim zealots to Osama Bin Laden or the commitment by substantial groups of Christians to bizarre leaders like James Jones.

The grave danger of not examining our first principles is that, instead of that examination, we will abandon reason, abandon that which defines us as human, and we will put in its place blind and truly undefined labels.  We will replace human discourse with name-calling.  We will, for instance, reduce all political issues to labels, terms that have no real meaning except “them, not us.”  My opponent is a “Commie” or a “Fascist”, although I have no real idea what either term really means.  I vote, not for a program but for a person, and those who do not vote for that person are not fellow Americans but enemies.  Most of all, I do not engage in discourse.  Instead I yell, I shout down, I ridicule and condemn.

This is, unfortunately, where we are today, and the growing tendency of our educational system to abandon the examination of first principles does not bode well for our future.  Wise old Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living.  We seem these days determined to prove his point.

We who are suffering through the various scandals and malfeasances of our executive branch have a great deal to learn from the events traditionally referred to as Watergate.  It is so named because what began to bring those events to the national attention was an incredibly amateur and thoroughly bungled attempt to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee during the campaign to reelect Richard Nixon in 1972.  That little affair led, first by dribs and drabs and ultimately in a raging torrent, to the revelation of criminal misconduct throughout the presidential staff.  It concluded with several prominent figures among that staff being sent off to prison, many lives being irreparably damaged and the president resigning in shame.  The colossally decent Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon, and he began his tenure by giving a talk to the nation.  That talk began with an unforgettable line:  “Our long national nightmare is finally over.”

As we now know, that particular nightmare was over, but the door for others to appear remained, as it likely must, open.  We are, after all, a democracy, meaning that we honor and protect the freedom of all people to speak and act with only modest albeit critical  restraint.  That policy carries with it the inherent danger of allowing freedom even to those who do not care about, or oppose or even plot to destroy that very democracy.  One may reasonably wonder into which category we should place the miscreants in the present administration.

It behooves us all to study the Watergate affair to better appreciate what is happening today.  There are any number of books on the subject.  Among them is Blind Ambition, the first of several recountings by John Dean.  Then, as now, questions abounded.  Who knew what?  Who did what?  Was the president involved?  What did he know and when did he know it?  One question, however, is not much asked, and, for me, it fairly begs an answer:  what the hell were they thinking?  Specifically, why would a person like John Dean willingly commit serious crimes, crimes that would inevitably be revealed and for which he would inevitably throw away a good life and career?

Dean was, by title, counsel to the president.  Raised in the Midwest, he graduated from the prestigious Georgetown Law School, a part of the Jesuit university renowned for it school of law and of international affairs.  He spent a short time in private practice, and joined the White House staff at a very  young age.  He was apparently intelligent, and was also apparently principled.  Yet he willingly involved himself in conduct that a first-year law student would know deserved disbarment.  Why?

Dean does not, at least in this first book on Watergate, either explain or, somewhat to his credit, condone or justify his conduct.  He was knee deep in the cover-up of the grossly illegal conduct of the Nixon White house, and it was only after it became blatantly obvious to all that the axe would fall that he decided to come clean.  Even then he withheld information from his own lawyer until its revelation was unavoidable.

Why?  Why would not the counsel to the president, the one individual whose single assignment was to advise the president as to the legality of his actions, why would that one person not just say the obvious, the blatantly obvious, that paying hush money to criminals is illegal, a crime, not to mention morally deplorable?  Why would a person with a fair share of talent and a huge opportunity to do some serious good throw it away on such cheap and obvious thuggery?

I will ignore the possibility of the kind of condescending response so laughingly typical of East coasters, particularly the adopted ones.  I submit that the real answer is that Mr. Dean, and his co-conspirators, lacked, were fairly devoid of, the moral orientation that defines what it means to be a human being.  Blame his parents, blame his educators, but most of all blame John Dean.  For whatever reason, John Dean succumbed to that greatest and most invidious of temptations.  He put himself first.  He defined good as what served his self-interest.

This is the linchpin of all misconduct, all criminal action, and it is also its fatal flaw.  It is what brought down the Nixon regime, and it is what is bringing down the Trump regime.  Sooner or later, thanks to the efforts of Robert Mueller and his crew but also thanks to the deeper good in each of us, the crimes of the self-absorbed will be revealed and rejected.  Somewhere in such conspiracies there is always a John Dean, some person who realizes, at the very least, that his or her self-interest is actually best served by rejecting the crimes, by confessing involvement, by taking the punishment.   It is up to the John Dean of the moment to say whether he or she had any truly human motivation.    The simple point here is that any human venture — or misadventure — conceived and driven by self-interest is intrinsically and fatally flawed and will collapse.  It might cause great pain and great damage, but it will fail.

Good will out.  Slowly perhaps.  Painfully certainly.  Good, the fundamental commitment to others that is the real meaning of the American ideal, will out.

United States Constituion, Article III, Secontion III:

1:  Treason agsint the United States, shall consis only in levying War against the, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.  No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Wintesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

2:  The Congress shall have  Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Attainder:  definition:  the extinction of the civil rights and capacities of a person upon sentence of death or outlawed usually after a conviction of treason.  Webster Dictionary

Corruption of Blood:  definition:  the effect of an attainder which bars a person from inheriting, retaining, or transmitting any estate, rank, or title.  Webster Dictionary