My oath was to support and defend the Constitution. I did not swear an oath to make us better. But even this debating and sharpening is not that to which I swore an oath. Realizing the idea of America has been the work of the country since its founding. And the iron-sharpening work of disagreeing over and debating ideas about what America is and ought to be has made us better, not worse. Slavers and abolitionists and those held in bondage did not agree on the idea of America-and the country went to war over it. Jefferson and Hamilton did not agree on the idea of America. Biden supporters and Trump supporters do not agree on an idea of America. In reality, you and I probably do not always agree about what the idea of America is or ought to be. I did not swear to support and defend the idea of America, or American values, or democratic ideals-because since this country’s founding, serious Americans have disagreed about just what the idea of America ought to be, and which values are American, and which ideals are democratic. The oath I swore, and the oath sworn by at least 81 of those charged in the insurrection, was not always to do what I believe to be in the best interest of the country. I am making the weaker claim that one can believe oneself to be fighting for one’s country while at the same time contradicting the words of the oath. I am not making the strong claim that January sixth insurrectionists violated their oaths of office. When people leave military service, surely they are absolved of their oath. But even if all this is true, their actions were at odds with the oath they had previously sworn. I have no doubt that they committed their violent and illegal acts to defend and secure their own idea of America. I have no doubt that they believed-however mistakenly-that they were acting in the best interest of the country. I have no doubt that those who participated believed the election was stolen. Most of those who stormed the Capitol and threatened members of Congress did so because they believed it was the right thing to do. Each of those 81 current or former military service members has-at least once, perhaps several times-raised their right hand and sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. On the 6 th of January 2021, the Constitution was threatened by “enemies domestic.” Insurrectionists breached the Capitol intending to disrupt Congress’s efforts to “open all the Certificates,” as Article II, Section I of the Constitution requires, so that “the Votes then be counted.” According to CBS News, at least ten percent of the more than 700 people charged in connection with the insurrection have served in the U.S. But I have heard several officiating officers follow this statement up with a second: that in the United States military, our oath is to the idea of America. military oath of office stands apart from others around the world in that we swear an oath, not to a monarch, nor to a head of state, but to the Constitution. The officiant in such ceremonies often points out to the honoree and to those in attendance that the U.S. In those fifteen years, I have attended countless enlistment, commissioning, and promotion ceremonies. It is that document I swore to support and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic at the Old North Bridge in 2006 and now, fifteen years in, I bear true faith and allegiance to the same. It was the thirteen sovereign states’ duty, he wrote, “to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” The throwing off-the Revolutionary War-took place from 1775 to 1783, but the new guards would not be in place until the first nine of the thirteen states ratified the U.S. Thomas Jefferson would formalize the language of that agreement the following year. It was the “rude bridge that arched the flood,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, where “embattled farmers stood // and fired the shot heard round the world.” There was no Constitution then only a tacit agreement between the thirteen colonies to throw off the bonds of tyranny. I first swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution in 2006 at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |