Article Vi, section three of the Constitution - that almost nobody discusses, even now - is a special oath requirement including all Republicans and other state and national-level officeholders. The oaths were written by the Founding Fathers to create a national defense system for Constitutional government, against an understanding of hi…
Article Vi, section three of the Constitution - that almost nobody discusses, even now - is a special oath requirement including all Republicans and other state and national-level officeholders. The oaths were written by the Founding Fathers to create a national defense system for Constitutional government, against an understanding of history in which Brutus, Cassius, Cato the Younger, and others were heroes and Julius Caesar, a Trump-like ambitious demagogue, was Satan. Nobody is invoking these oaths, - nor their activation mechanisms - that require many Trump-supporting and Trump-enabling office holders to remember what they said, engage the active verbs, and stop the damage.
The Constitution is a designed and complex machine for a Republican form of democracy to secure liberty and benefits of democracy while keeping the wrong people - ambitious demagogues like Donald Trump and organized minority factions - from hard-charging and manipulating themselves into control of all three branches of national government and dictatorship. If George Washington and his associates faced Donald Trump's invasion of the Capitol and other coup plotting, their responses would not have been Stoic! Cato delivered his Four Orations Against Cataline when Cataline and his faction plotted to invade the Senate chamber and assassinate Cataline's enemies. Unlike Mitch McConnell, Cato personally escorted the captured conspirators to their execution when "they were hung and their necks broken" in Salust's vivid phrase, in a book admired and widely recommended by John Adams. Cicero's classic discussion of tyrannicide, citing violated public oaths, led to the death of English kings in history known to the Founding Fathers. The Constitution's framers took the power and implications of the Constitution's oaths seriously. Their design tries mightily to save American Constitutional government from demagogues like Trump without violence - keeping them from office, separating power with checks and balances, omitting political parties from discussion in the Constitution and its system, impeachment, and - ultimately - the uniting, failsafe oaths throughout the nation to transcend partisan loyalties and stop people like Trump. It's overdue to ask Mike Johnson and all Republican office-holders across the land, "Didn't you take an oath . . .?" LE
What a great point. Of course they all took the oath of office. And when the new congress members come in Jan will they also have to swear they will defend the constitution. Maybe lawyers could be present to explain their responsibility to accept the election results.
Article Vi, section three of the Constitution - that almost nobody discusses, even now - is a special oath requirement including all Republicans and other state and national-level officeholders. The oaths were written by the Founding Fathers to create a national defense system for Constitutional government, against an understanding of history in which Brutus, Cassius, Cato the Younger, and others were heroes and Julius Caesar, a Trump-like ambitious demagogue, was Satan. Nobody is invoking these oaths, - nor their activation mechanisms - that require many Trump-supporting and Trump-enabling office holders to remember what they said, engage the active verbs, and stop the damage.
The Constitution is a designed and complex machine for a Republican form of democracy to secure liberty and benefits of democracy while keeping the wrong people - ambitious demagogues like Donald Trump and organized minority factions - from hard-charging and manipulating themselves into control of all three branches of national government and dictatorship. If George Washington and his associates faced Donald Trump's invasion of the Capitol and other coup plotting, their responses would not have been Stoic! Cato delivered his Four Orations Against Cataline when Cataline and his faction plotted to invade the Senate chamber and assassinate Cataline's enemies. Unlike Mitch McConnell, Cato personally escorted the captured conspirators to their execution when "they were hung and their necks broken" in Salust's vivid phrase, in a book admired and widely recommended by John Adams. Cicero's classic discussion of tyrannicide, citing violated public oaths, led to the death of English kings in history known to the Founding Fathers. The Constitution's framers took the power and implications of the Constitution's oaths seriously. Their design tries mightily to save American Constitutional government from demagogues like Trump without violence - keeping them from office, separating power with checks and balances, omitting political parties from discussion in the Constitution and its system, impeachment, and - ultimately - the uniting, failsafe oaths throughout the nation to transcend partisan loyalties and stop people like Trump. It's overdue to ask Mike Johnson and all Republican office-holders across the land, "Didn't you take an oath . . .?" LE
What a great point. Of course they all took the oath of office. And when the new congress members come in Jan will they also have to swear they will defend the constitution. Maybe lawyers could be present to explain their responsibility to accept the election results.
I doubt the Trumpistas care what oath they took.