Swearing like a trooper
Oath Keepers are a group of far-right radicals who fundamentally refuse to obtemper a legal duty incumbent on them that, to their mind, falls foul of the Constitution of the United States of America. The oath inherent in the title of the group is that of allegiance to the USA.
However, the group’s title misses the point of what an oath is. The oath of allegiance to the USA is a promise to the USA made in the name of God. If you don’t believe in God, you don’t swear the oath; or any oath, for that matter; you make an affirmation instead. That is a promise that does not bind you to God, is not made in the name of God. This is a fact that may or may not be overlooked by members of the Oath Keepers, but it is a fact nonetheless. Facts are things that people will blithely overlook when it suits them.
Nonetheless, Oath Keeper keepsakes can be procured that are produced by professional printing and manufacturing companies. When I was a boy peeking into dirty books, I wondered sometimes that printing companies had the audacity to produce such photographs for public sale. Yet they do, and they produce documentation and keepsakes for the Oath Keepers as well.
When the Sex Pistols produced their song Anarchy in the UK, they resorted to “blackmail style” newspaper cutout lettering and daubed slogans to emphasise the anarchistic nature of their message. I’ve no doubt you can get keepsakes of the Sex Pistols that are written in copperplate with gilded frames, a style more to be found among the works of Queen, and not the Sex Pistols. Some printers don’t question the aims of those who commission printed works from them. Some do. And a lot of them have no problem with the Oath Keepers. Just God does, sometimes, I reckon.
What is especially perverse about the Oath Keepers is the mere notion that he or she who takes an oath, and thereby binds his or her soul to God, can join a group that instructs them on what is or is not in accordance with their duty to God, something that not even the church will do. For the church will never profess the ability to look into a person’s soul; that is an insight reserved to God and the soul’s owner. The Oath Keepers, however, do profess such insight, and that is, however you look at it, a perversion.
Thomas More went to the block over an oath. And one day, perhaps the Oath Keepers will as well.
