Apparently the American people are paying attention. We just received a question via our contact page that cuts to the core of the Navy Jacks mission, the mission of the United States Armed Forces, and the connection between the two. Here it is:
I read where your founder, Mr. Williscroft, stated that a member of the military's first obligation is "to their commander-in-chief."
One of my two sons—both of whom recently graduated from USNA (09)—was asked by a civilian, "If the people of the U.S. rose up against the President of the U.S., who would the military stand with?" I was quite surprised to hear my son state that the issue had come up in class recently and it was stated that the military is obliged to stand with the people.
What say you?
On Inauguration Day, a newly-minted President swears a solemn Oath that he "will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
The order of the terms of this Oath can be read as a hierarchy of priorities: the President swears first to execute faithfully the duties of his Office, and second to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Historically, presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama have set aside Constitutional constraints where they came into conflict with what they perceived to be the faithful execution of their Office.
Military officers swear an Oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same." Enlisted members further swear "that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice."
See the distinction? Whereas the preservation of the Constitution is the President's second priority, it is every military member's highest priority, higher even than obedience to the President and his chain of command.
This is a classic example of what Constitutional scholars call a balance of power, where powerful institutions are organized such that each exerts a check on the power of the others, thus promoting stability in the system as a whole.
Note that there is an element of your question conspicuously absent from the foregoing: the People.
Let us suppose that a significant fraction of the People decided that they preferred no longer to pay a Federal Income Tax, and rose violently against the President in order to make it so. Since the Federal Income Tax exists as a consequence of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the people comprising this uprising could clearly be described as domestic enemies of the Constitution. Any serviceman standing with the uprising and against the President would be in violation of his Oath, and would probably be subject to capital punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
On the other hand, consider a case where a President engages in a massive, extra-Constitutional power grab, such as the nationalization of vast swaths of American private industry.
One could now make the argument that any order issued by the President in support of this objective would constitute an unlawful order under the UCMJ. Service members are not merely allowed to disregard unlawful orders... they are required to do so!
But here's the problem: very few service members receive their orders from the President. In practice, when a commander—even the Commander in Chief—begins to issue erratic and unlawful orders, the right answer is not wholesale anarchy in the ranks. The right answer is for the commander's immediate subordinates to relieve him of command and appeal to higher authority for further instructions. In this case, relief of command translates to impeachment, and higher authority means Congress, the Senate, and ultimately the People of the United States.
So, in theory, a service member's first obligation is actually to the Constitution of the United States. In the real world, though, service members realize this obligation through their loyalty and obedience to their Commander in Chief.
This is why service members on active and reserve status are barred from participating in Navy Jack operations. To the extent that the President engages in unconstitutional acts, we Jacks are free to oppose him because we are not bound by Oath to his chain of command. Military members are so bound, and are thus required to trust their superiors to do the right thing... at least until such time as their superiors have manifestly demonstrated, at every level, that they will not. Is it a little bit different for officers than for enlisted personnel? It is... but as a matter of policy the Jacks choose to err on the side of discretion.
Considering that getting it wrong leads the offending service member more or less directly to the gallows, we think this is the right call.
Are there exceptions to this rule of obligation to the Commander in Chief? Sure there are... In 1861 the West Point Corps of Cadets numbered 278, of whom 86 were Southerners. By May of that year, 65 of that number had resigned their appointments and received safe conduct beyond the Mason-Dixon line, where on arrival they took up arms against their former classmates.
In American history, this is a surpassingly rare event.
Here's the bottom line: the mission of the Navy Jacks is to guarantee the ability of American citizens to assert their Constitutional rights within the context of a nation that still operates according to Constitutional constraints. So long as that context prevails, there is no difference between a service member's loyalty to the Constitution and his loyalty to his Commander in Chief.
The day the United States Constitution is no longer recognized by the United States Government as its sole foundational source of authority—as it is now, even if there are significant failures in its application—then the game will have fundamentally changed, and the Navy Jacks will acquire a new and much more challenging mission.
If we Citizens of the United States do our duty now to assert our Constitutional rights and to require our elected representatives to fulfill their own sworn obligations, then this awful, fateful day will never come to pass.
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