The Price of Sedition

By its own words, the Constitution is able to defend itself, needing only the strength of the population to uphold it. In a recent court ruling in New Mexico, a county commissioner was removed from his elected office as 'disqualified' to hold any office. The county official had been found guilty of participating in the January 6^th insurrection. Specifically, he was found guilty of a misdemeanor … unlawfully entering the Capitol grounds.

The judge ruled that he had violated Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution. Faced with insurrection, the U.S. Constitution wields a heavy hammer; and justly so. There is no place in any governing body in this nation for those who have stood against the precepts for which the Constitution stands and, more specifically, violated the oath they took to defend it 'against all enemies, foreign and domestic'.

Here is the wording of section 3 of the 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I invite you to read it.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The wording dates to the days after the Civil War and was intended to prevent former Confederate officers, Confederate government officials, Confederate state officials, and others who had held federal or state posts before the war, from ever serving in any such office in the U.S. again.

Original intent notwithstanding, these words should disqualify any number of participants in the seditious activities of January 6^th and the events before and after from holding any office in this country. That includes offices from county election officials to the Presidency.

Our Constitution is strong enough to defend itself. But do we, the people who are protected by that document, have the will to put those words into action in its defense? Failing to do so may cause us to be forced to relive the words of Abraham Lincoln, spoken on November 19, 1863.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

The threat to our republic grows; in public and in dark places.Let's not repeat history ... please.