Rampant disrespect for the oath of office has become the norm
Unless a winning candidate takes the oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, he cannot take office. But there is more to the law than that. In order to take office, a candidate who has won an election must take the oath honestly, free of perjury, and without reservation. If a candidate takes the oath with the intent not to keep the oath, the oath is invalid, and the candidate is ineligible to hold office, per the law.
Yet the governments of America are rife with officials who violate their oath. Not only that, but candidates are permitted to take the oath, and then to take office, about whom it is well known before the fact that they do not bear allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.
How is this known? In many cases, the candidates tell us frankly that they are opposed to all that. But even though they tell us, no one in authority is willing to prevent them from taking office, as per the requirement of the law and common sense. That is a major problem.
About whom are we talking? There are many. For example, virtually every one of the Democratic candidates for president has been up front about their anticonstitutional intentions. But there are really too many examples from both major parties to mention without having to write a book about it. In fact, taking the oath of office with bad intent and perjury has become the norm.
The idea that rights are inviolable or unalienable has become, among America's bureaucracy, antiquated, an idea whose time has passed. This is not a partisan issue. No one could have expressed it more honestly than George Moraitis, formerly a Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives, who before an assembly of the Broward Republican Executive Committee general meeting, on March 19, 2018 stated, "Sometimes we have to compromise on rights."
Putting that into context, Moraitis and the majority of the Florida Legislature had recently decided to create legislation that violated the Constitution, infringing the right to bear arms of thousands of young adults in Florida, who the legislature banned from purchasing firearms until the age of 21. They had all taken an oath of office to defend and support the Constitution, which they all violated, preferring their private opinions instead.
But the act of violating the Constitution served as evidence of their unwillingness to keep the oath, which in turn rendered them ineligible to continue to hold office, and to assume any sworn office in the future.
That is just one more example of a government unwilling to support and defend the Constitution. Evidence of that unwillingness may be found at all levels of all branches of government. Those candidates who obviously have no intention of keeping the oath are welcomed into the fold of illegitimate public officials by those who preceded them, whose job it is to prevent the unworthy and ineligible from taking office, but who swear them in as though nothing were amiss and betray us all as they to violate the Constitution.
And although it is a federal crime for federal officials to violate the oath of office, no one in authority is faithful to the oath such that charges might be filed where obvious violations have been committed. Lawlessness is epidemic within the government at all levels and in all branches, while those responsible for responding to that lawlessness seem unconcerned.
Unless this trend is reversed and the oath of office ceases to become an empty formality by which none actually feels obligated, the Republic will be lost. Rule of law must be restored, which cannot take place unless respect for and enforcement of the oath of office is restored.