“Officers” of the U.S. swear an oath to the constitution. If we testify before Congress or in any type of judicial preceding we take an oath to do so truthfully. We are swear before God, before man, or before “the heavens above” or the “ground we stand on” or perhaps on our family, or by some ‘holy” relic. to call out actions for or against our opponents or ourselves.
Wiki defines oaths thusly:
A solemn pledge or promise that invokes a deity, a ruler, or another entity (not necessarily present) to attest the truth of a statement or sincerity of one's desire to fulfill a contract or promise. quotations ▼
take an oath
swear an oath
break one's oathA statement or promise which is strengthened (affirmed) by such a pledge. quotations ▼
After taking the oath of office, she became the country's forty-third premier.
The generals swore an oath of loyalty to the country.A light, irreverent or insulting appeal to a deity or other entity.
(Can we add an example for this sense?)A curse, a curse word.
Very similar word forms come to us, Old English āþ; Middle English ooth or oth;Proto-West Germanic aiþ; Proto-Indo-European *h₁óytos; North Frisian ith, iss; Old Irish óeth. We could go on, but nearly every Western language has a similar word. Obviously that indicates that oaths extend into the beginnings of the very earliest Indo-european languages. TheTamil word “sapatha” is not far off. It is one of those root words used to determine linguistic families. But in French I believe an oath is closer to a sermon and in Spanish it is “juramento” (judgment).
The French word however is rooted in an expository sermon that was a relief by a vow from an ordeal. The oath of truth that is judged to be the truth, as is the Spanish term (similar to judgment. But both were based on the dual Norman terminology for an oath and an ordeal and an oath could be a release from an ordeal by the swearing of a truth. And so the serment (oath) and the supplice (ordeal) somewhere became couched via religious terminology and while I have no direct knowledge of older pre-French words for oath, since the early inhabitants of much of France later transported to (and then from) England that were rooted in the languages previously referred to, and the “French” language seems to only have began to develop post-Caroliningtons, I imagine the earliest inhabitants of the French language probably had a similar Indo-European root.
Spanish is an oddball as well because it is rooted in 7th century Arabic terminology (via Latin) of the oath as a judgment one challenges to God. That in itself has definite linkages to the older Aramaic and Hebrew concepts of an oath as an adjuration to give testimony or information – uttered by the party interested in the testimony and directed to the community at large or against a particular party. (The Hebrews had other “types” of oaths, but we are primarily concerned here with the oath as an act of public truthtelling. One of the other types of Semitic oaths would be more akin to what we might term a “curse” and the third was the obligatory binding by a god to a person to perform a specific act). So of course the other types of old Semitic oaths also still exist.
Others, using words like “I promise to” or “I swear that” still give oaths. It seems an essential part of at least of mideastern and western languages and probably predates organized governments. The intention when taking an oath is not limited to the moment someone articulates the words of the oath. Oath-taking is also about the intention in the future to commit to act in a certain way. One example is the vows taken by couples during their wedding in front of witnesses. British philosopher John L. Austin called oaths “performative utterances.”
Oaths were very possibly born as a method to prevent self-interest that might disrupt an early community. But they became a prominent way in the historical era to bind people to gods and kings. If a man will lie to serve his own interests, he will instantly suspect his neighbor of doing the same thing. It is, therefore, a natural presumption and we can safely assume from the evidence that primitive man had little faith in the accuracy of facts, related to him by.his fellows, if they in any way affected the interests of the relators. However, he clearly realized that it is impossible for a well-ordered community to exist unless some reliance can be placed upon the words -of the members of that community. Some means, therefore, had to be devised, by which men could be bound to tell the truth and to perform their promises, so that there might be faith between them. But in uncultured societies oaths can once again take on the self-interests of the individual to call forth curses upon his fellow man, or the “truth” that an oath is meant to express can be deceptive if the performative words are not backed by the truth.
It is said that in Siberia. when a member of the wild tribe of Ostyaks is to be-a witness, the head of a wild boar is brought into court.' The Ostyak wiIl then- imitate the actions of the- boar in eating and call upon wild boars in general to devour him if he does not speak the truth. The efficacy of the ceremony depends upon the fact that the witness believes he will fall a victim to the ferocity of a boar if he fails to keep his pledge. And of course all oaths are expected to be kept, the oath, apart from our belief that my swearing the words of the oath, the swearing itself makes them true. If a couple swears in their vows of marriage to make their “love” eternal, that somehow the marriage has a validity garnered by such a vow. My wife and I saw no validity in swearing before gods of any kind, but we wrote vows that swore to each other. Those vows took on a meaning to us that we can refresh with each other in times of disharmony between us.
If the oath is not fulfilled, we find ourselves disbelieving in far more than the perjured words. Perjured testimony in law destroys our trust in the system of law; politicians who fail to honor their oaths of office divide us into distrusting our very government.
But it is not that words can equal truth—but our vows, or oaths, give us a since of illusion in the veracity of order. The truth that is spoken by anyone is the truth of both objective and subjective truths of our own experiences and learning. I can never speak truth beyond what appears to me to be the truth. I can read about Thomas Jefferson and believe he is not a hero. Perhaps I do so because growing up he was the American hero. My objective knowledge tells me heroes have flaw; my subjection experiences tell me I can admire myself only when I recognize my flaws. I see no such subjective acknowledgement in Jefferson, I find him hypocritical. I see in George Washington who always recognized his flaws and yet suffered many of the same hypocrisies, nevertheless I view him with much greater admiration than I do a man such as Jefferson. Subjectively I have often found limits many and they transfer their greatest flaws onto others and perceive their own flaws as the worst flaws that another can perform. But the flaw of a broken oath leads us to untrust. If a church leader violates his oath and seduces someone’s wife or child it creates anguish and distrust in all oaths. If a doctor makes a mistake we want to sue because few us have much knowledge about medicine, and when he fails to do no harm (the hippocratic oath) we feel betrayed and want vengeance.
Likewise we feel betrayed by those who break their oath to govern us and take away rather than help us succeed in acquiescence. It is not the oath to the constitution that matters because many don’t the actual words. The constitutional oath to the average person is an oath to the process of what we take as our constitutional rights. Violating that oath is serious to the American persona. I will go farther. Trump’s entire presidency was a serious aggravation of his oath. He endangered our security by showing classified documents while he was president. He did not protect us. He did not defend us. And he certainly never served the people which the constitution is dedicated. Who cares if he was an officer or not an officer, who cares if he violated the lesser oath, he violated the greater time and time again. He cannot serve in any role again because long before January 6th he violated his oath and endangered the lives of Americans. He violated his oath to protect defend and serve Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Black Americans.
The presidency of Donald J. Trump was an insurrection. He violated his oath, and that was seditious to every American who suffered increased persecution, every American confused on the guidelines of Covid, every American who was, or could have been, harmed by his lax interference with security.
Not only should the 14th amendment disqualify him from future presidencies, so should his violation of almost every clause in Article II. But I still can’t fathom that he can run for president by threatening to overturn the constitution.
The man’s performative oaths or merely that. He has told us he will violator his oath again and our courts should loudly proclaim that he cannot be president again. They should also tell him he can run on the promise of overthrowing the government and redesigning in an image preferable to him.