January 12

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your blogger started to prepare a new entry for Tuesday, but my heart wasn't in it. I should be back up to speed by Thursday.

It gets personal:

"insure domestic tranquility"

 

On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump took this oath of office:

"I do solemnly swear that I 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."

You may recall that the U.S. Constitution begins...

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution….”

On January 3, 2021, the entire House of Representatives and one third of the Senate took this oath:

I do solemnly swear that I will 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; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Houston, we have a problem (your blogger's opinion). On January 6 the president incited an insurrection against our government, thus breaching his oath of office by not preserving, protecting and defending the "domestic Tranquility" clause of our constitution, and congressional members who supported and continue to defend him breached their own oaths of office. Our nation should not tolerate this.

 

In October, 2020, your blogger stood in the library of Montpelier (the historic Virginia home of Founding Father James Madison, fourth president of the United States) as part of a two-person private tour of the mansion. In that very room Madison studied ancient and modern democracies and confederacies to prepare for the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia (Madison knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew). Madison is forever hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for drafting and promoting that document. His library desk faces the three windows directly above the center door, looking out onto more than 2,000 acres of gorgeous Virginia Piedmont scenery.

At that same time in history your blogger's ancestors were toiling as farmers just west of Philadelphia, then the largest city in British America. They had arrived as twenty-somethings in 1754 from Schwäbisch Gemünd, Germany, and the yield from their crops helped feed the growing city. For that reason I feel a special connection to the founding of our country. My ancestors witnessed the American Revolution and drafting of our constitution first hand, and one of my ancestors fought in the War of 1812 (56th Regiment Virginia Militia). For this reason, you can imagine my unutterable dismay at recent events.