Mask Mandates Have Convinced Me That the Oath Keepers Have a Solid Point About 'Back the Blue'
About the time of the Tea Party movement, I wrote a post highly critical of the “Oath Keepers” movement within the Armed Forces and law enforcement. The thrust behind the Oath Keepers was that there were bright lines that their membership would not cross in the course of carrying out their duties. This is the list of orders they pledged not to obey,
adapted from their website.
1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.
- We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects – such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.
- We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.
- We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state’s legislature and governor.
- We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.
- We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
- We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
- We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control” during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.
- We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.
- We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
My post is no longer available on the internet, as far as I can tell, but my view at that time was that no society could afford to have armed men charging about the landscape, making their own rules for when and how they will carry out their duty. The secondary point was that the Oath Keeper “will not” list was all fever dream stuff that could never happen here. I now concede that I was childishly optimistic about what was possible in the United States. Though I still hold my original view on the importance of men with guns following orders, it has become more nuanced. If we demand our military and police do what they are told to do, we have to trust that they will only receive sane and lawful orders from their superiors. By lawful, I don’t necessarily mean just “legal” but also orders that fall within our constitutional and republican traditions. By sane, I mean orders that wouldn’t strike the average person as batsh** crazy.
I don’t care how many “lawful” orders are issued about social distancing; there is no circumstance where police are permitted to enter a private residence to enforce this kind of a bullsh** ordinance. Here, again, are New York’s finest in action.
No ordinance forbidding outdoor gatherings justifies police breaking up a funeral procession.
In Brooklyn, NY there was a Jewish funeral and the police went to stop them so they started to protest. NYPD brought in a Firetruck.
pic.twitter.com/49BvBuVptn
— Darán (@plasticwanker)
April 9, 2020
Normal people don’t arrest a mother with her daughter for trespassing no matter how many “lockdown” orders have been flung bout.
The fallacy in my thinking was rooted in the assumption that elected leaders and senior appointed officials would balk at ordering crap that was unconstitutional and/or made them look stupid. Obviously, I was wrong. It had never occurred to me that police officers would obey orders that required them to pepper spray mourners or give a beat-down to someone without a mask or go to someone’s home to demand to know how many people were inside. This is the type of fascist nonsense we used to expect from the Soviet Bloc or, in the last 18-months, Australia.