Oath Takers

by L. Douglas Hogan

  2) Knowledge: Awareness or familiarity.

  “In expanding the field of knowledge, we but increase the horizon of ignorance.” —Henry Miller

  The above quote is not necessarily a bad thing. What Miller was saying is that the more you learn, the more you understand you don’t know that much. I realized that years ago one day while I was in deep thought. I would compare it to a library: you know what a library is, and you know what you’re going in to read, but as you study the topic matter, you find yourself researching more than you had anticipated. New doors open with every minute of research. In short, you leave smarter, but feel overwhelmingly uneducated.

  Being in a leadership position requires you to know that you don’t know it all. That’s why it’s so important to surround yourself with knowledgeable people and numerous resources. When you don’t know the answer to a question, let them know you don’t have the answer, but you will get it.

  “A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.” —Kahlil Gibran

  To paraphrase, “work with what knowledge you have, not without it, and certainly don’t let your knowledge go unused.” If you have people working for you that are knowledgeable in any given area, utilize them. Like Ralph Cudworth stated: “Knowledge is not a passion from without the mind, but an active exertion of the inward strength, vigor and power of the mind, displaying itself from within.”

  3) Courage: Ability to disregard fear; bravery.

  “Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.” —Samuel Johnson

  I want to dispel the myth that courage is a lack of fear. It’s just the opposite of that. Courage is having fear but choosing to disregard it. This is something felt by most oath takers, especially those who put their own safety aside for the preservation of liberty. Our military men and women, our police, those who contract their services overseas, security guards; the list can go on, but the point has been made.

  Leaders have a job which sometimes requires them to counsel those they work with. When doing this, you may feel apprehension due to the possibility of a confrontation. If this happens, you have two options; either disregard the apprehension, taking into consideration any other issues that need to be resolved, or disregard the possibility of a confrontation. These two options still require you to do so with knowledge and understanding. There sometimes needs to be contingencies in place in case there is a confrontation. Generally people become defensive, if the counseling is more severe. This can be neutralized by the way you approach the matter. Always talk about strengths before you attempt to resolve the shortcoming. After you have bolstered the person’s character and delicately resolved the issues, you need to finish by complimenting the person on their strengths. If you have these things in mind at the time of the meeting, you will be focusing on positive things that tend to neutralize the negative and that will help push the element of fear or apprehension out of the equation. This system will work wherever courage is required, you will just need to alter the thought processes that take you into the moment of dread.

  “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” —C.S. Lewis

  In short, be brave when things are most difficult, and don’t give up. Only through the fire can your bravery be tested.

  4) Decisiveness: Quick to accurately decide.

  “There is a time when we must firmly choose the course we will follow, or the relentless drift of events will make the decision.” —Herbert V. Prochnow

  Many oath taker duties require quick and decisive action. In some lines of duty hesitation can get someone killed. God forbid, someone under your area of responsibility becomes the victim of your inaction. Sometimes, nature allows for deliberation, but other times its judgment is instant and forever settled.

  “In every success story, you find someone has made a courageous decision.” —Peter F. Drucker

  5) Dependability: Reliable.

  “The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.” —Henry Lewis Stimson

  No employee will ever blossom beyond their current status of mediocrity if they’re not empowered with responsibility. This is also a good opportunity to test a person’s strengths and character.

  Dependability is required of every leader. The people are watching to see if you are dependable, just as you are watching your leaders to see if they are dependable. In all things be faithful and watch your work ethic become renowned.

  6) Initiative: The action of taking the first and leading step.

  “A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.”

  —Banksy

  This is a very true and powerful statement. I have worked in environments where the employer does not want to be bothered with a hundred questions, but on the same note will bark frustrations at you for using initiative. I’ve always used initiative, even to the frustrations of my supervisor. I would rather seek their forgiveness than give my authority away along with the ability to make decisions on my own. I’m in a position of leadership; therefore I will utilize any and all traits associated with leadership.

  7) Tact: Having the ability to avoid what would disturb somebody.

  “Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head, make their point of constructive criticism and continue on in calm forbearance. Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.” —Quentin Crisp

  I touched on this in the courage section of this chapter. I love the quote and Crisp delivered it proficiently tactfully. Leaders with no tact are generally not considered friendly people. Public speakers and PR officers need to be proficient in this trait. Be mindful that the words you choose can have a positive or negative outcome. Keep in mind that there are generally sects of people dissecting your words to reformulate them into an agenda of their own.

  “Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.” —William Shakespeare

  “Tact is after all a kind of mind reading.” —Sarah Orne Jewett

  8) Justice: The principle of moral or ideal rightness.

  “If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.” —Francis Bacon

  Justice has a way of policing itself. If the oath taker cannot oblige himself/herself to honor their oath, then a series of unfortunate events are sure to follow. It takes great patience to rely on the American system of justice. Many times in my police work, officers are likely to spend countless hours on a case, just to see the State’s attorney dismiss it. It’s difficult to keep a positive attitude when justice isn’t being served up by those who have sworn to uphold it. There was a point in my own career that I almost gave up entirely. Eventually I came to my senses and went back to work emboldened by the thought of getting my job done, even though there are individuals on the side of justice not doing theirs.

  “Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.” —Lord Hewart

  9) Enthusiasm: Intense feeling for a cause.

  “It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.”

  —Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Everybody wants to work for a cheerful and enthusiastic leader. Happy employees are productive employees; miserable employees will be poison in your bones! My lifelong goal as a leader was always to be fair, firm, and friendly across the board. Fair in judgment, firm in discipline, and friendly to all.

  10) Bearing: Ability to maintain a proper attitude.

  “Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you
?” —Fanny Brice

  A couple things could be said about bearing. First, a proper and consistent attitude should always be maintained. If you are consistently in a positive state of mind, then your people will know when you are out of sorts. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as long as you know you have lost your bearing. It becomes a bad thing when you have lost your bearing and you fail to notice it. Another way to say it, if you’ve lost your bearing, you’ve lost your way. Many oath takers have lost their way and have been misplaced on the road we call “duty.”

  Second, don’t be a fake leader. Posing to be somebody you are not will eventually catch up with you. Some people confuse leadership with power and, in doing so, seek after the authority and fall into a position that requires leadership. I would like to think there is a fail-safe for these types of instances that would keep a power-grabber from attaining these goals, but unfortunately, unions have been set up in many organizations that provide equal opportunities for leaders and power-grabbers. Be sure your motives are pure when you set out for the position you are seeking. Leadership is a journey, not a destination.

  11) Endurance: Ability to withstand prolonged strain.

  “Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.” —Ryszard Kapuscinski

  “Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves.” —Sir Winston Churchill

  Endurance can easily go hand-in-hand with patience and long-suffering. No true leader can ever understand the need for perseverance in a person’s life, if he has not endured, himself. Sometimes the process of developing into a leader requires your leader to make you wade through prolonged circumstances that require endurance. The way endurance is instilled in a leader is by subjective experiences with it while you are in a position of a follower.

  12) Unselfishness: Unconcern for one’s own interests or pleasures.

  “That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect.” —Jean de La Bruyère

  “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.” —Apostle Paul

  13) Loyalty: Faithfulness.

  “A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.” —Bertrand Russell

  I enjoy being liked; most people do. When I go to work, I do not have a mind-set to make trouble wherever life may lead. Rather, I enjoy making people laugh and I take whatever route I can to get there, generally at the cost of a momentary loss of professionalism. But the thing that’s great about loyalty is, the people that work for me laugh with me; then we get back to being professional.

  14) Judgment: Discernment; good sense.

  “A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.” —Lionel Trilling

  Judgment isn’t always the simple definition of decision-making, whether good or bad. There’s a deeper discernment involved that includes other faculties of the mind, involving wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. These three things need to be properly calculated into an entire picture of everything it’s being applied to. It’s much easier for a judge or a jury to collect evidence and sit and think on a situation and the decisions and actions that went into it than it is for an oath taker to make an instantaneous decision only with available information. That decision can be of extreme weight, which is why a leader must be equipped before he leads.

  “Caution has its place, no doubt, but we cannot refuse our support to a serious venture which challenges the whole of the personality. If we oppose it, we are trying to suppress what is best in man—his daring and his aspirations. And should we succeed, we should only have stood in the way of that invaluable experience which might have given a meaning to life. What would have happened if Paul had allowed himself to be talked out of his journey to Damascus?” —Carl Jung

  I tried my best to establish everything I could on the fundamentals of leadership. The bottom line is that leaders cannot be leaders without followers. Followers make leading possible, and leaders make following possible. It is a symbiotic relationship that cannot exist one without the other.

  If you are an oath taker, mind your fundamentals of leadership as you uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. People will be closely monitoring you and your abilities to lead in times when governments are corrupt. Please don’t get caught up following the crowd or going with the grain. Some of the most beautiful wood patterns I’ve seen contain grains that don’t flow with the rest. It is the American spirit to stand against tyranny, not with it.

  WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT, ARMY, NAVY, AIR FORCE & MARINES

  “True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them the desire to do right is precisely the same.”

  —Robert E. Lee

  I’m going to write as frankly as possible. I haven’t refrained from saying things the way I feel and I certainly believe the time for tiptoeing around in the tulips and walking on eggshells is long past.

  Most people I speak with can sense that something is not right in this country, and others can sense that something bad is going to happen soon. When the conversations take off, there are several mass crisis events that are mentioned. However, the endgame is always the same: the U.S. military.

  Let me attempt to put your mind at ease with a couple of my thought processes. First, to the nonmilitary Americans, the States are too big, and the population too large, for the military to contain a workable martial law. The U.S. government would rely heavily on the state, municipal and county law enforcement agencies to assist. Martial law includes the confiscation of oil fields, farms, water, power plants, etc. It is the oath taker that will be commanded by a tyrannical leader to seize these key resources. To the U.S. military Americans, you are governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Every veteran has served under it and all active duty military men and women are serving under it. The orders your command gives you cannot go against the UCMJ, nor can they be contradictory to the U.S. Constitution; any such order is unlawful. If you are currently serving in the U.S. military, you are obligated to oppose any unlawful order given to you or contrary to the U.S. Constitution. Your command staff are very familiar with the UCMJ and understand perfectly well their obligations to ensure lawful obedience to it and to the Constitution. For your convenience, I am printing Article 90, for the sake of highlighting a couple truths.

  Article 90 - UCMJ

  Any person subject to this chapter who–

  (1) strikes his superior commissioned officer or draws or lifts up any weapon or offers any violence against him while he is in the execution of his office; or

  (2) willfully disobeys a lawful command of his superior commissioned officer;

  shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, and if the offense is committed at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct (Article 90 Uniform Code of Military Justice).

  First, Article 90, section 1 is very clear that you cannot strike a commissioned officer while he is in the execution of his office; and secondly, section 2 states that you cannot willfully disobey a lawful command. With these points highlighted, it’s apparent that it is indeed lawful to disobey an unlawful order. The UCMJ protects you from willful
disobedience if the commands are unlawful. Commanders, not only are you obliged to give lawful orders, but the UCMJ also protects servicemen and women who willfully disobey an unlawful order that you give. When it is determined that your orders are tyrannical and unconstitutional, the UCMJ says they are not committing mutiny, should they deem it necessary to purge their command of tyranny.

  Article 94 – UCMJ

  (a) Any person subject to this chapter who–

  (1) with intent to usurp or override lawful military authority, refuses, in concert with any other person, to obey orders or otherwise do his duty or creates any violence or disturbance is guilty of mutiny;

  (2) with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of lawful civil authority, creates, in concert with any other person, revolt, violence, or disturbance against that authority is guilty of sedition;

  (3) fails to do his utmost to prevent and suppress a mutiny or sedition being committed in his presence, or fails to take all reasonable means to inform his superior commissioned officer or commanding officer of a mutiny or sedition which he knows or has reason to believe is taking place, is guilty of a failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition.

  Again, the key words are lawful military authority and lawful civil authority. If it is unlawful authority and/or unlawful civil authority in question, then the UCMJ does not apply.