The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley in his 2023 farewell address as a military man, but equally applicable to us all, military or civilian, said: “We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”
As if to make General Milley’s point, the tension over loyalty oaths came to a head in our country on November 21, 2025, when President Trump threatened Democratic law makers, all of whom had substantial military or CIA intelligence experience. The lawmakers had made a video calling on the U.S. military to refuse any illegal orders they might receive that violated the laws or the Constitution. They were speaking of only illegal, not legal orders. As the lawmakers stated, the oaths of the military are to the Constitution, not to any man. They did not as their opponents falsely charged call on the military to evade lawful orders; they declared simply as to unlawful orders: “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”
President Trump responded immediately with a reply on his social media platform, Truth Social, by asserting the Congressmen had displayed “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH! LOCK THEM UP!” Apparently, it was too much for President Trump that the military should resist unlawful or unconstitutional orders.
The current President of the United States is quite unaware of Article VI of the United States Constitution—the very document he swore an oath to defend and protect. Article VI provides: “the laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance hereof shall be the supreme Law of the Land” and “all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and the of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution….” The “executive” and “judicial officers” include military officers. No oath is provided nor could be provided to any person. Moreover, federal law requires that all members of the armed forces swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution. The oath is an important part of commissioning military officers to provide assurance their loyalty is to the Constitution before any person.
The Orders Project of the National Institute of Military Justice (NIMJ) is available to “assist military personnel in understanding their options when faced with orders they believe may not be legal” by connecting them with former JAG officers and other experienced attorneys equipped to address the issue.
Further, the duty not to follow an unlawful or unconstitutional order is not only essential to the Constitution the President is sworn to protect and defend, but is a duty reinforced by the experience of the Nuremburg trials of the Nazis following World War II. The Nuremburg trials were overseen by British jurist Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, and prosecuted by an American Supreme Court Justice, Robert H. Jackson, under procedures established by the London Charter. There the Nazis learned that crying “I was just following orders! Orders!” was no defense to criminal assault, murder, crimes against humanity and other violations of law against civilians.
Following the President’s statements, the lawmakers contacted the Capitol Police because of the danger the President’s reckless words posed of inciting violence against them. Only later in the day did the Presidential spokeswoman begin to back off the President’s remarks by answering “no” to the question whether the President had wanted to execute members of Congress.
It was all a reminder that to preserve our constitution, our oaths, civilian or military, are only to our constitutional democracy, and never, no never, to any person, party or political movement.
In 410 BC the Assembly of Athens, upon a restoration of their democracy from the an eight-month imposition of tyranny by a band of wealthy oligarchs, required all citizens to take an oath. The oath of loyalty was to the democracy and to resist, “anyone who overthrows the democracy, holds office under an undemocratic regime, or seeks to establish a tyranny either for himself or for someone else.” A strong oath, yet unlike the oaths of ancient Rome to a Caesar, or of Nazi Germany to a Hitler, the loyalty oath required was not an oath to any man, but to the Athenian constitutional democracy. As Americans, we are required to do nothing less than the world’s first democracy: no oaths ever unless to our Constitutional democracy alone, and never, no never, to any person, party or political movement, so help us God.
Robert P. Wise is a Northsider.
