Last week, the State of California avoided a possible constitutional confrontation over its requirement that all public employees sign an oath affirming that they will "support and defend" the United States and California Constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
A mathematics teacher named Marianne Kearney-Brown, who is a Quaker and a pacifist, declined to sign the loyalty oath because it might later be construed as committing her to take up arms to defend the nation, which would violate her religious beliefs. The State finessed the situation by agreeing that the oath would not be interpreted in that manner.
But the real question is why California requires public employees to sign an anachronistic and relatively meaningless loyalty oath at all. Certainly, a truly disloyal employee poses risks to the government. She might (if she were doing something other than teaching remedial math) disclose secret information to an enemy; destroy important government files; make decisions intended to harm the public interest; and recruit other employees to engage in subversive activities. But just how does a loyalty oath guard against such dangers? After all, anyone who is truly disloyal will simply take the oath falsely. No dangerous subversive will be deterred by the requirement of an oath.
The origins of the California loyalty oath, which all state, city, county, public school, community college, and public university employees are required to sign, can be found in the era of McCarthyism. Added to the state constitution in 1952, the oath was designed, like so many other legal measures of that sorrowful era, not to protect the nation against real subversion, but to frighten, intimidate, and punish individual citizens for exercising their constitutional right to question and criticize the government.
In the 1930s, during the Depression, many Americans questioned both the capitalist system and the political leadership of the nation. On urban breadlines and devastated farms, Americans asked hard questions about the need for economic and political reform. Among the many organizations to which they turned was the Communist Party, which was then a legal political party that regularly ran candidates for public office.
After World War II, with the beginning of the Cold War, most Americans who still had ties to the Communist Party or to organizations with connections to it quickly severed them. But, by then, it was too late. The most infamous question of the next two decades - "Are you now or have you ever been . . . .? - had entered the American lexicon.
Political leaders like Senators Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy quickly seized on the opportunity to leverage fear to their political advantage. As Americans worried about the prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union and accusations of Soviet espionage spread throughout the nation, right-wing ideologues launched a campaign charging that thousands of Communists had secretly infiltrated the government, the military, the unions, the schools, and the media.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce demanded concerted action to drive subversives out of these and other positions of influence. Francis Cardinal Spellman warned that Communists are "digging deep inroads into our nation" and are "trying to grind into dust the blessed freedoms for which our sons have fought, sacrificed, and died." In 1947, Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, the new Republican Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, pledged to "ferret out" all those who sought to destroy the American "way of life."
President Harry Truman charged that such "scaremongers" had "created such a wave of fear and uncertainty that... people are growing frightened -- and frightened people don't protest."
But Joseph McCarthy persisted. "I say one Communist in a defense plant is one Communist too many," he said in 1952. "One Communist on the faculty of one university is one Communist too many." The Republican Party platform charged the government with shielding "traitors."
Within a few years, a plague of loyalty oaths had spread across the nation. By 1956, forty-two states, including California, and more than two thousand county or city governments had enacted loyalty oaths for public employees. As Truman had warned, a cancer of fear had swept the nation.
The very concept of "loyalty" is painfully elusive. It is defined entirely by a state of mind. Does it mean "my country, right or wrong"? Can a citizen oppose government policies - including a war - and still be "loyal"? Can a citizen be a pacifist and still be "loyal"?
Loyalty oaths reverse the essential relationship between the citizen and the state in a democratic society. As the Framers of our Constitution understood, the citizens of a self-governing society must be free to think and talk openly and critically about issues of governance. In a regime of loyalty oaths, it is the government that defines which thoughts and which ideas are permitted.
Dissenting views, nonconforming views, are deemed "disloyal." The very existence of such oaths reflects an utter lack of confidence in the American people. Nothing so dangerously corrupts the integrity of a democracy as a lack of faith in its own citizens.
Loyalty oaths serve no legitimate function. The government can and should investigate and punish unlawful conduct. But it should not attempt to intimidate American citizens who express "disloyal" beliefs. It is time for California to recognize that its requirement that public employees swear an oath of fealty to their government is a relic of a shameful past and, quite simply, un-American.
If an organization can't solicit "loyalty" as a direct result of its charter and its actions, one has to wonder if it is really worth showing "loyalty" to.
Is it a coincidence that the issue of a loyalty oath has raised its ugly head again when we are engaged in “a war on terror” in which the “enemy” is ill-defined and politicians have deliberately nurtured fear in the body politic and used it to acquire and retain power? If the use of loyalty oaths to intimidate and to diminish debate occurs most notably during periods in which the perceived threat to the nation is an ill-defined ideology rather a clearly identifiable enemy, it would explain why, for all the vicious rhetoric of the Vietnam war era assailing the patriotism of those who opposed the war, there was no wide-spread agitation for loyalty oaths. (Because I was living abroad during the last three years of that war, I’m not sure that this is correct, but it seems to me that the loyalty oaths of that period were vestiges of the McCarthy/HUAC period. If I remember correctly, the loyalty oath that I had to take in the late 1970s to teach in a state university in the deep south specifically required me to swear that I was not then and never had been a member of the Communist Party -- and that I had never had a venereal disease. Honest. Could I make that up?)
If this analysis is correct, then the inability to define the ideology that is the perceived threat (Islamofascism? What the hell is that?), much less to identify persons who subscribe to that ideology (Arabs? Muslims? only members of certain Muslim sects? only Muslims of certain nations? only Muslims of certain sects of certain nations? home-grown adherents?), may exaggerate the paranoia that demands loyalty oaths, and may suggest that we are on the threshold of a new wave of agitation for such oaths.
of the freedoms it declares, and being loyal to the Constitution seem to be conflicting loyalties to me.
If the Constitution says you have the right to speak out at the regime says "shut up!" how can you be loyal to both?
Requiring an oath BEFORE any illegal activity has been shown, or better yet, proven is an insult to anyone's integrity. I am to be punished for something I MIGHT do?
Of course the Oaths real utility was so the person could be prosecuted for perjury if they were found to be members of the Communist Party or some other outlawed group. (Not the Ku Klux Klan, they were 100% American.)
Some way for the " Land of the Free "to act. Can't have people "Too" Free. Or the wrong kind of " Free."
As Americans , or Californians, we are as Free as our government allows us to be.
(or something like that)
I think everyone might of signed an oath not to mock my post when they became a member of Huffpost, so be careful what you say.............................
thanks
So her unwillingness to take up arms will probably be respected by California's Army, but is the U.S. Army bound by this agreement?
Seriously, did a California official really presume to speak for the U.S. Army? And she bought it?
Are the numbers really down that much that they're willing to shanghi Quaker math teachers into service?
Yes.
If you are a conscientious objector to war on religious/moral grounds, you can prove this by answering a set of questions that are outlined in a DOD regulation. In the United States, you can be CO and it is legally recognized by the government. There are two types: people who will serve in the military in non-combatant roles, and, people who reject any participation in the military. No Quaker math teacher will ever be conscripted in the time of war against her will. However, conscientious objection to tax payment because it will be used for military purposes is not legally recognized by the United States.
Semper fi
Loyalty oaths are worthless, except that if you can prove disloyalty it will make for an additional criminal charge.
Red flags are popping up all over my thought bubble...
Smells of Cheney assault my senses.
Do they really think that we are all thoughtless sheep?
We the people are now paying attention.
oath to any political party, state or federal government. The constitution will always come first.