To Bind Ourselves Willingly

So… a certain someone said a certain something this week about “seditious lawmakers” and “punishable by death,” due to a ninety-second PSA reminding members of the military that they are legally required to refuse illegal orders. And when certain someones start talking like medieval kings discovering livestream filters, my instinct is to gather everyone and say, “Alright, lace up. We’re going on a field trip.” Because if we’re going to toss around words like sedition the way toddlers toss glitter, we really need to take a stroll through history.

Let’s pause and put a pin on what sedition actually is, because this word gets tossed around like confetti at a rally. Under American law, sedition means one thing and one thing only: inciting or organizing the violent overthrow of the United States government. Not criticizing it. Not disagreeing with it. Not warning people about their lawful duties. Sedition requires an attempt to destroy the constitutional order by force. Full stop. The framers intentionally drew that line in neon ink, because they had lived under regimes where simply embarrassing a governor was “sedition.” They wanted no part of that sequel. So when someone points to a PSA about lawful military obligations and calls it sedition, that’s not just incorrect — it’s an attempt to drag us back to the world we fought our way out of.

The PSA itself was a group of veteran lawmakers — former service members speaking in careful civic language — looked into a camera and said, essentially: “Hello, service members. Quick reminder: your oath is to the Constitution. Illegal orders are to be refused. That is your duty.” That’s it. Not incendiary. Not partisan. Basically the military version of “don’t microwave foil.”

I am not going to speculate on the motives behind its creation. I’m not inside anyone’s head, and I’m not going to pretend I know what internal frustrations or concerns about official channels might have prompted a group of lawmakers to speak directly to service members like that. But I will say this: public reminders to military personnel about their duty to the Constitution — delivered outside the chain of command — are extraordinarily rare. This is not something lawmakers do casually, or ever, really. It is unusual by its very existence.

And the phrase they chose — “don’t give up the ship” — is not accidental language. It’s one of the most solemn touchstones in American military tradition. Captain James Lawrence’s dying command during the War of 1812. A line that has shown up in moments when service members needed courage, clarity, and an anchor for their oath. It’s the kind of phrase you use only when you believe the moment warrants an appeal to the deepest layers of duty and heritage. I’m not here to tell you what it means. I’m just pointing to the historical weight of that choice and the fact that people in positions of responsibility reached for it now.

Before we go any further: the idea of refusing unlawful orders is not some fringe, rebellious concept. It’s baked into U.S. military ethics. Troops have had to make those calls before — from My Lai, where helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson physically inserted his aircraft between armed Americans and unarmed Vietnamese civilians, to service members decades later who refused to participate in actions they believed violated the law of war. These weren’t political stunts. They were the sober carrying-out of an old, solemn obligation written into the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is simply part of the job.

And here’s the part we forget: this whole idea of refusing unlawful orders didn’t just appear one day because someone in a Pentagon subcommittee thought it sounded noble. It was built slowly, painfully, out of historical trauma. The founders, still flinching from the memory of redcoats enforcing the whims of a king, made sure the American oath ran to the Constitution — a document — not to any individual man. A century later, in the middle of the Civil War, the United States wrote the world’s first modern laws of war — the Lieber Code — which spelled out that soldiers were personally responsible for refusing illegal commands. Then came Nuremberg, when the world agreed that “just following orders” could never again excuse atrocity. And then My Lai, which forced the U.S. into its own reckoning, reshaping military ethics and training so thoroughly that every service member now learns, early and often, where the constitutional line sits.

This is the lineage behind today’s doctrine. Not partisanship. Not vibes. Hard-earned wisdom. It’s one of the things the American project has managed to get right, and it sits quietly at the center of every military oath taken since..

Now — back to the tour. We begin in merry old England, which despite its branding was not especially merry if you had opinions. Sedition there meant anything that made the Crown feel insecure. Criticize the king? Sedition. Criticize the government? Sedition. Criticize the church, which shared a calendar and stationery set with the government? Double sedition, sweetheart. Worse: the more true the criticism, the harsher the punishment, because truth caused more “public scandal.” This is the emotional-support tyranny the colonists grew up inside.

Step into the colonies and the rules are the same, just with worse dentistry. In 1735, printer John Peter Zenger was arrested for publishing accurate criticisms of the royal governor. His lawyer argued truth should be a defense. The jury erupted into civic puberty and said, “Actually, no — this is unreasonable,” and acquitted him. It was a seismic moment — still a century before the First Amendment, but a cultural recalibration. A small but potent whisper that maybe criticism of government shouldn’t be a crime.

Fast-forward to 1787. The Constitution is being drafted, but the people — who have lived through surveillance, censorship, forced oaths, and punishments for speech — are side-eyeing the whole thing like a suspicious casserole. And here’s the part most civics textbooks tiptoe around: the Constitution would not have been ratified without the Bill of Rights. The people insisted on it. They did not trust the government — any government — not to slide into monarchy again. Many were openly terrified that the new executive could simply become a king with a better wardrobe.

Why were they so adamant? Because they remembered the specifics.

They had been forced to swear loyalty oaths to the Crown or face imprisonment, exile, or property seizure.

They had been ordered to stay silent as printers were jailed for publishing true stories the government found embarrassing.

They had been compelled to attend state-approved churches and taxed to fund clergy they didn’t believe in.

They had been required to turn in neighbors for “seditious talk,” or else be charged themselves.

They’d been forbidden from assembling unless a governor approved it.

They’d been arrested for submitting petitions criticizing authorities.

They’d been forced to house troops — troops who watched them, listened to them, intimidated them.

They’d seen soldiers punished for questioning orders that targeted civilians.

They’d seen citizens punished for refusing to help enforce oppressive laws.

These weren’t hypotheticals. These were lived experiences. Traumas. Things people had been commanded to do, or punished for refusing. The Bill of Rights was not drafted as poetry. It was drafted as a barricade.

The Anti-Federalists said it out loud. Brutus — the elusive, razor-sharp writer whose essays rattled the Federalists — wrote: “Ought not a government, vested with such extensive and indefinite authority, to have been restricted by a declaration of rights? It certainly ought… those who argue otherwise are wilfully endeavoring to deceive, and to lead you into an absolute state of vassalage.” Vassalage. That was the fear. That was the flashpoint.

Virginia refused to ratify without a Bill of Rights.

Massachusetts wavered and demanded revisions.

New York refused outright.

North Carolina walked away entirely until protections were added.

The founders didn’t include these rights because they were generous. They included them because the people refused to participate without them. The Bill of Rights was the price of admission — the original condition of consent. The people said:

“We will take part in this experiment if, and only if, these rights are written, permanent, and non-negotiable.”

And that echoes across every generation. Deep in the American nervous system lives the memory that these rights were not gifts. They were demands. They were boundaries. They were the terms under which the people agreed to bind themselves to one another in a common political life.

Which brings me to something so beautiful it knocks the wind out of me every time I read it. Before the Bill of Rights, before the amendments and the courts and the centuries of quarrelsome democracy, the Articles of Confederation described the states as entering into “a firm league of friendship… for their common defence, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare… binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered… on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever.” A league of friendship. Earnest, hopeful, naive in the best possible way.

That was the vision: that we would defend each other’s liberties. That the pact was mutual. That the rights we insisted on were not just shields for ourselves but promises to one another.

Now — back to the rollercoaster of reality. In 1798, John Adams passed the Alien & Sedition Acts and immediately proved everyone’s fears correct. Newspaper editors were jailed for insulting government officials. Juries revolted. Jefferson ran for president on “absolutely not” and won. The pattern was set: government panics, grabs at speech, tries to muzzle dissent… and then the public snaps back. The pendulum doesn’t swing; it ricochets.

It happened during the Civil War.

It happened during World War I.

It happened during World War II.

It happened during McCarthyism.

Before every “never mind,” there was outrage, chaos, lawsuits, protests, jury nullification — the whole national immune system firing.

Which brings us to our own reflection. Americans bicker about everything. We are a deeply unserious people in many ways. But when someone in power kicks at the load-bearing beams of the First Amendment? We get very serious, very fast. Because somewhere inside us is the memory of what we fled. And historically — consistently — Americans do not tolerate the muzzling of dissent. The minute anyone in authority starts talking about punishing speech, the country becomes a single ancient creature remembering the old deal: we only agreed to do this if the rights were real.

So the real question — the one humming under the floorboards right now — isn’t whether we will push back. We will. We always have. The question is: what will it take this time?

How far will this have to go before the line is drawn?

Will it be rhetoric?

Threats?

Legal overreach?

Will it be the courts again?

The protests again?

The elections again?

History says the correction always comes.

But history also says the cost varies.

And that is what unsettles me.

Not whether we’ll return to the Constitution — but what we’ll have to walk through, and who we’ll have to become, to get there this time.

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.

— Abraham Lincoln, 1838, Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield