President Trump has gone on one of his tears about the latest demarche by Democrats, urging our GIs to “refuse illegal orders.” The Democrats’ scheme is one of the most insidious stunts we can recall, a point well-marked in the New York Post. None of these Democrats, so far as one can tell, has yet produced an illegal order. Yet there’s a new video up on X saying that our soldiers, sailors, and spies “must” refuse illegal orders.  

The video features, among others, a handful of legislators, all Democrats. They include Senators Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and several representatives, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Jason Crow of Colorado. To our soldiers and sailors, they say, “Don’t give up the ship.” They don’t name anyone who has given up, or is thinking of giving up, so much as a canoe.

Nor do they talk about when this kind of thing first got to the Supreme Court. The first case involved two socialists — Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer — who, in leaflets, urged the public to disobey the World War I draft, claiming it violated the 13th  Amendment outlawing slavery. It was analogous to the “illegal” orders about which today’s Democrats are carrying on but which they don’t cite. The World War I draft, it turned out, wasn’t illegal.

That was the opinion of a unanimous Supreme Court in the case of Schenck v. U.S. The court was also unanimous in another case challenging the draft. It was brought by another socialist, Eugene V. Debs, who also appealed on First Amendment grounds and lost, unanimously. He ended up getting out of prison and being hosted at the White House by President Harding, before continuing to what amounted to his retirement.

The point that sticks with us is that it’s easy to suggest that a law is illegal. It’s much harder to convince a court — particularly the Supreme Court — on that head. Debs, Schenck, and Baer thought they were right about the legality of the draft. They turned out to be wrong. This is something to remember when the Democrats start carrying on about illegal orders. On what basis are they saying an order is illegal and to which orders are they referring?

No wonder President Trump is so furious about the Democrats suggesting that our GIs are being given illegal orders — or might be.  He called the video message by the Democratic solons “really bad, and Dangerous to our Country.” Fair enough. Yet Mr. Trump overstates the case when he suggests that the lawmakers’ message to the troops amounted to “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.” His press secretary walked back that idea.

In any event, the cynicism animating the lawmakers’ message to GIs is shocking, because it overlooks that America’s service members — both in the enlisted ranks and in the officers corps — can already be relied upon to stand by the Constitution. Under the Army’s Oath of Enlistment, soldiers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Soldiers pledge, too, to “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me,” a rule that is the sine qua non of a functional military. Absent any evidence of illegal or unconstitutional orders being given, the Democrats are sowing doubts about the legitimacy of the chain of command. That kind of talk runs counter to the wisdom of Washington, who comprehended that “discipline is the soul of an army.”