Every elected official swears an oath to defend the Constitution. Not a party. Not a President, nor any individual. Not a social media following. They swear an oath to the Constitution. They take these oaths of their own free will. No one pointed a gun at their head to seek the office that requires obedience not to a leader but to a document that is our Constitution. What I wonder all the time is how someone can take that oath and then so easily break it. The saddest thing is that it is just all too common. So common that many people don’t notice, and so common that many people don’t care. Here are some very common things that elected officials have done that are actually a violation of their oath. Trying to overturn an election. Pressuring state officials to change election results. Voting to throw out certified votes without evidence. Lying to the public about things they know are not true and using their office to help themselves instead of the country. You don’t need a law degree to understand why that is dangerous.

What happened after the 2020 election crossed the line. After the 2020 election, we had 147 members of Congress vote to overturn certified election results, even after every court had rejected the claims of voter fraud. This was even after the violence at the Capitol, and even after police officers were attacked and many were injured. This was not a small deal. These were attempts to undo the will of millions of voters. Some of the more visible names included Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gartz, Jim Jordan, and Scott Perry, and of course, there were many others. You don’t have to be a Democrat or a Republican to see the problem. You just have to believe in the Constitution and that your vote should count.

Now here is the part that nobody wants to say out loud: voters rewarded oath breakers. Here is the uncomfortable truth that lies underneath all of this: Millions of Americans voted for politicians who had already broken their oath of office. Does that mean that many of those voters wanted to see our democratic republic fail? I don’t know. It does mean that they were willing to overlook the seriousness of what happened. When a politician breaks their oath, like all of the participants of the January 6^th insurrection, and they vote not to certify the election, they still managed to get reelected. The message they received was that it worked, and they can do it again. That is not a partisan point. That is a point in human behavior. If a politician lies and gets rewarded, undermines the Constitution and gets rewarded, spreads false claims and gets rewarded, and refuses to accept lawful results and gets rewarded, then the incentive is clear. The system has taught them that breaking their oath isn’t a career-ending scandal. It is now a political strategy. Democracy doesn’t die in one dramatic moment. It does slowly, every time people shrug off behavior they would never tolerate from anyone else.

To understand how so many voters ended up shrugging off something as serious as an oath being broken, all you have to do is look at the information environment they are living in. When a small number of billionaires own major media outlets, they gain enormous power to shape the narrative that millions of people see, hear, and believe. They don’t have to lie outright. All they have to do is decide which stories get repeated, which stories get buried, which stories get twisted, and which stories get framed as “no big deal”. Over time, this can create a world where some people never even hear that an oath was broken. They hear it reframed so many times it stops sounding like a violation at all. Billionaires owning the media can spotlight stories that protect certain politicians while downplaying their constitutional violations. They can also help build loyalties to personalities or political parties, making the oath seem secondary. Another byproduct is that they can normalize extreme behavior through repetition, turning serious violations into “Just Politics”. They can also turn accountability into an attack, shifting the blame away from the politician and onto anyone who points out the violation. I think that most voters don’t want democracy to fail. But when the information is filtered through a narrow set of interests, it becomes easier to overlook behavior that they would never tolerate in any other part of their lives. Once people stop insisting that the oath matters, the oath stops mattering.

It is the people on the fence who often decide an election. They are the ones who break a tie. They are also the ones who send the loudest messages. They are the ones who force politicians to raise their standards. Right now, the message that needs to be said is simple: if you break your oath, you don’t get rewarded with more power. It is not about party loyalty. It is not about ideology. It is because the country deserves better. The country deserves integrity and honesty. Can you honestly say that people who do not uphold their oath have integrity and honesty? You don’t have to become a liberal or a conservative. You don’t have to join a movement. You just have to decide that the Constitution matters more than any one politician’s career. When you vote, you have to ask yourself some simple questions. Did he or she lie to you? Did he or she betray their oath? Did he or she try to overturn an election? Did he or she pit themselves above the country? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, what makes you think they will suddenly start respecting your vote or your freedom next time around? If you would trust them with your wallet, your car, your kids, why would you trust them with the Constitution?  

Look at all of the times we have seen members of the Executive Branch break their oath of office. It is not just Trump, but it is pretty much his whole administration. Trump tried to overturn an election. His administration has opened investigation into political rivals and has weaponized the Department of Justice. He has issued public statements supporting claims that the courts have already rejected. Trump has used the military against the American people in ways that have raised constitutional alarms. The pressure to deploy troops in our cities that exceeds his authority, discussions about seizing voting machines, and proposals to use the military to “rerun” elections in certain states. They have ignored subpoenas, witnesses were instructed not to testify, documents have been withheld without legal justification, and Inspector Generals were removed during active investigations. In fact, I may use an entire blog post to discuss how Trump and his Administration have broken their oath of office because I haven’t even gotten to ICE.

A politician who breaks their oath of office has already told you who they are. A voter who keeps supporting them tells the country what they are willing to accept. If America is to survive, it cannot accept oath-breaking as normal. Not from the left. Not from the right. Not from anyone. If you are the fence, you have more power than you think. Using the power to demand honesty and responsibility isn’t partisan – it's patriotic.