Honor and Duty Aren't Toys

Democrats call the "Refuse Illegal Orders" is an irresponsible and cynical attempt to leverage the virtue of enlisted men and women for partisan gain.

I want to put all the piece into place properly for this thesis. On November 18th, Senator Elissa Slotkin posted this video on Twitter, I mean X.

This video is all so much partisan jawboning that I find it difficult to watch the whole thing without rolling my eyes. But the take-away is when the Democratic representatives in the video are speaking to uniformed military and demand “You must refuse illegal orders.”

If we take this video in complete isolation, it is true. Our enlisted military should, indeed, not follow illegal orders. That is true and they act in great honor and with great bravery when they refuse an illegal order.

The problem is that the Democrats have put out this video as bait. They follow that bait with declarations that certain specific actions from the Trump administration are illegal orders. Katie Porter, who is one of the front-runners for the upcoming California governor’s race, referenced this video when she said that the act of calling National Guard into Los Angeles was an “illegal order”.

This ruling that Porter is referencing was quickly stayed by the 9th Circuit. This means Porter is using a out-of-date headline to say that Trump sending National Guard into LA was an illegal order because one judge said so even though that judge’s ruling was quickly reversed.

The thing I’m getting at is that the demand that uniformed military reject illegal orders is, in isolation, exactly true and good and honorable. In isolation, that is what we want from our soldiers. But this honor is subsequently being leveraged in a partisan and selfish context to imply (if not outright demand) that soldiers can refuse to follow orders from the Trump administration.

Think of the legality of this particular action as a timeline. President Trump sends the National Guard to LA on June 9, 2025. Judge Charles Breyer declares that this action was illegal on September 2. The Ninth Circuit stays this ruling on October 22nd. So if we’re looking at the formal legality of this particular action, it looks like this: