Because I am rarely in the “undecided” voters column, I don’t pay much attention to political ads. But last week was an exception. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), with five other Democrats, rolled out a video that, in my view, is among the most reckless, disingenuous, and dangerous political messages of all time.
Their stark message, delivered by all six speakers in patched-together statements, was directed to the several million members of our U.S. military and intelligence services. It reminds them that they have not just the right but the responsibility to refuse to comply with illegal or unconstitutional orders; and it includes not-so-subtle urging that they do so right now, before it’s too late.
Note that Slotkin and her colleagues do not offer a single example of illegal or unconstitutional directives currently in place; they simply assert that it’s happening. In their words, “This administration is pitting uniformed military and intelligence community against American citizens.” Really?
Let’s set the record straight.
First, every uniformed service member who takes the oath to support and defend the Constitution already knows that he or she is not required to follow illegal or unconstitutional orders. But that’s an extraordinarily rare event. (In my lifetime, the one occasion I can think of is the order by U.S. Army Lt. William Calley in 1968 to fire on peasants in a Vietnamese village — for which he was prosecuted, convicted, and jailed. And even the illegality of that order was complicated by the fact that Calley’s platoon had been mauled by Vietcong combatants embedded with villagers.
Second, the vastly more important dimension of military life is that our service members commit to following orders, explicitly, without hesitation, every time, 24/7. That’s how the system works, and that’s why it works. In the military, you will inevitably be directed to do something that you’d rather not do that day or even that you think is misguided. In the U.S. Navy, where I served, the one acceptable response to such unwelcome orders is “Aye aye, Sir.”
Of the six Congress members featured in Slotkin’s video, the one who disappoints me most is Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Kelly is a retired Navy captain, a former naval aviator, and astronaut — major career accomplishments that demand great skill and courage. So, Senator Kelly, thank you for your service. But surely, you know better.
Senator, do you really think that National Guard troops ordered to deploy in Washington, DC, should decide for themselves if the president’s order is constitutionally proper? Or do you think it’s better to let the U.S. Supreme Court wrestle that one to the ground while the Guard troops do what they’re told?
Or, Senator Kelly, can you imagine being the commanding officer of one of our Navy ships positioned today in the waters offshore of hotspot Venezuela — and being unsure if your officers and men are willing to comply with your orders to man battle stations? (“Nah, Captain, let’s wait until Congress authorizes the president…”). I’ll bet you can’t even conceive of that happening.
The intent of the Slotkin video is crystal clear: to further undermine our military personnel’s confidence in their commander-in-chief, the president of the United States. That is a poisonous and implicitly dangerous action. Although they pretend not to, in effect, the Slotkin six are encouraging direct noncompliance with orders. In the Navy, we call that mutiny.
In a Truth Social post, President Trump, with his usual short fuse, called it sedition — and he later added the post-script that “the punishment for sedition is death.” And as 100% predictable, the Left jumped all over that remark, feverishly claiming that Trump is planning to arrest and execute six members of Congress.
That’s nonsense, of course — but to keep it in perspective, let’s not forget that this is the same crowd that impeached Trump for inciting “insurrection” (overthrow of our nation) on January 6, 2021.
But more importantly, let’s face up to the very real adverse consequences of the Democrats’ video. Their ad is of the same ilk as the disgusting heap of other dangerous, provocative rhetoric that they doggedly employ year in and year out — the whole fascist / Nazi / Hitler schtick — rhetoric that clearly played a part in the assassination attempt that came within a millimeter of taking Donald Trump’s life just last year, the one that did kill Charlie Kirk, and the one that came much too close to killing Justice Brett Kavanaugh. There’s nothing hypothetical about it — in each case, there is evidence that the perpetrator was inspired by such rhetoric.
Democrats have evidently chosen to continue their poisonous rhetoric — and we have every reason to expect that it will trigger more political violence.
I am writing this column on November 22, the 62-year anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Those of us who were around then will never forget that awful day. Jack Kennedy had his share of political opponents and critics, but the moment his life was cut short by an assassin’s bullet, the nation united in profoundly shared grief.
JFK’s assassination triggered a crippling downward spiral for our nation — it changed history and caused incalculable harm. In November 1963, Kennedy had been hitting his stride as president and was very likely to be reelected in 1964. Instead, we inherited President Lyndon Johnson, an accomplished political operative but over his head in foreign policy. LBJ oversaw our slippage into the Vietnam War quagmire (and ultimately more than 57,000 American deaths), expansive civil unrest, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and then Robert Kennedy, who could have been elected president in 1968. What might have happened if JFK had not been assassinated is unknowable — what did happen after his death is history, ugly history at that. We can’t allow it to happen again.
Sadly, in today’s social climate, I suspect that a successful Donald Trump assassination (a very real possibility) would elicit a very different public response than the Kennedy assassination in 1963. Surely, many would be gleefully pointing out just how evil Trump was and how fortunate we are to be rid of him, just as they did after Charlie Kirk’s murder. That’s a very grim indicator of the depths to which our society has fallen, and I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration.
In this and other ways, Democrats are facilitating our slide. We know you hate Trump, but is opposing him more important than keeping our country safe? Obviously not. We can do better. We must do better.
