We Can’t Have Politicians Who Lie About Their Oath To Defend The Constitution
Nicholas Giordano
You can’t establish a new constitutional order without first dismantling the one already in place.
Imagine a butcher shop hires a vegan whose stated mission is to poison the meat supply and destroy the business. Or picture an oil company appoints a CEO who campaigns to eliminate the oil industry. No sane institution voluntarily empowers those who pledge its destruction. Yet that’s exactly the threat facing our republic.
Today, Americans face an unprecedented constitutional question. What happens when candidates for public office belong to an organization that rejects the constitutional order? If elected, how can these individuals honestly swear a sacred oath to support and defend the Constitution when their own organization calls for its replacement?
This concern is no longer hypothetical. Card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), including Melat Kiros, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez, Chris Rabb, and others, continue to win Democratic primaries. The DSA platform calls to abolish the Senate, replace the presidency, and eradicate the Supreme Court through a new constitution establishing a “democratic socialist republic.”
Some will argue this is about reform, but there is a fundamental difference between reform and replacement. When you seek reform, you accept the legitimacy of the constitutional order and work within that framework. But a movement seeking to eliminate checks and balances, separation of powers, and the constitutional structures that have defined our republic since 1789 rejects that order altogether.
You can’t establish a new constitutional order without first dismantling the one already in place. This new reality forces us to confront a constitutional blind spot.
The American Framers engineered a system that anticipated almost every threat to the republic: ambition, factions, foreign influence, concentrated power, and tyranny. They understood the weakness of human nature, so they required the Article VI oath of office before a person can exercise a single power of government. Every elected official and many appointed officials are “bound by Oath or Affirmation” to support the Constitution.