{"id":165194,"date":"2025-11-30T07:19:57","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T15:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=165194"},"modified":"2025-11-30T07:54:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T15:54:15","slug":"active-duty-service-members-should-refuse-illegal-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=165194","title":{"rendered":"Active-duty service members should refuse illegal orders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ELKMcilOMvo?si=n0iMozFD47Fsdb7_\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Denotation and connotation were the whole story in that six-Democrats video. The denotative meaning was banal. \u201cActive-duty service members cannot follow illegal orders\u201d is straight out of military law. No one disputes it. It is the kind of line that would be unobjectionable if delivered in a Pentagon training module or a West Point lecture.<\/p>\n<p>Yet millions of people heard something else. Mark Halperin\u2019s admission captures the point. He looked at the video and saw what the words literally said. Many others looked at the same words and felt something closer to an accusation about 2025, a preemptive delegitimization of a possible Trump presidency, or even an effort to rally the military against a future commander-in-chief. That reaction was connotative. And that is what this whole fight is really about.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the lay of the land.<\/p>\n<p>I.<br \/>\nThe denotative meaning of the video was routine.<br \/>\nNo one objects to the rule that illegal orders must be refused. It is covered in Little v. Barreme and in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is taught in basic training. It is not partisan.<\/p>\n<p>But communication never lands on denotation alone, especially in a polarized environment. If a judge says \u201cno one is above the law,\u201d it can read as a neutral civic platitude or as a shot at a specific politician. If a pastor says \u201cwatch your leaders closely,\u201d it can sound like wisdom or like a warning aimed at a named villain. Context guides connotation.<\/p>\n<p>II.<br \/>\nThe connotative meaning hit like a live wire.<br \/>\nMany conservatives heard the video as a form of anticipatory resistance. The problem was not the literal sentence. The problem was the framing: six Democratic veterans staring into the camera, naming Trump, warning about illegal orders, warning about January 6. In the connotative register, the message sounded like: \u201cWe expect Trump to be a lawbreaker and we are telling soldiers to prepare to resist him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You can disagree with this inference, but you cannot deny that this is what millions of people heard. Connotation beats denotation when trust is low.<\/p>\n<p>Halperin admits he underestimated the sincerity of that reaction. He assumed people were acting. They weren\u2019t. They felt provoked at a pre-rational level. They felt that the military chain of command was being politicized again, and that the warning was not legal but theatrical. This is the same emotional response that flares when either side suggests the other is illegitimate or dangerous before a single policy has been enacted.<\/p>\n<p>III.<br \/>\nThe reverse connotative reaction was just as strong.<br \/>\nMillions of Democrats saw Trump\u2019s counterattack and felt a different kind of alarm. For them, the connotative meaning of his response drowned out his words. They heard \u201ctraitors\u201d and \u201cdeath penalty\u201d and felt the stakes jump from a communications skirmish into something darker: a president implicitly threatening members of Congress for speech that is plainly protected by the First Amendment.<\/p>\n<p>They were not arguing about the legal definition of sedition. They were reacting to the emotional freight of Trump\u2019s language and the history he drags behind him. On that side, the video was defensive and prudent, not provocative. The connotation was: \u201cWe know what happened last time. We are not naive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>IV.<br \/>\nMutual connotations are now stronger than shared denotations.<br \/>\nThis is the real divide Halperin is pointing toward. Two groups of Americans can look at the same neutral sentence and perceive mutually exclusive realities because every word is now loaded with historical cues, partisan memories, and assumptions about the speaker\u2019s motives.<\/p>\n<p>When trust collapses, even neutral language becomes symbolic.<br \/>\nWhen symbolism dominates, plain meaning loses its authority.<\/p>\n<p>That is why the argument instantly escaped the literal text. Conservatives demanded to know which illegal orders Trump had issued. Democrats pointed to Trump\u2019s threats to lock up his opponents. Conservatives insisted the video undermined civilian control of the military. Democrats insisted Trump\u2019s post was itself a threat to democratic norms.<\/p>\n<p>The debate never touched the sentence that started it.<\/p>\n<p>V.<br \/>\nThe deeper problem: political language is no longer literal.<br \/>\nEvery major political message now carries three layers.<\/p>\n<p>The denotative meaning.<\/p>\n<p>The connotative meaning the speaker intends.<\/p>\n<p>The connotative meaning the audience projects.<\/p>\n<p>All three layers are widening. When the parties no longer share a common frame, even a safe sentence becomes radioactive. \u201cIllegal orders\u201d becomes code. \u201cRule of law\u201d becomes code. \u201cChain of command\u201d becomes code. And code is susceptible to fear, fantasy, and projection.<\/p>\n<p>VI.<br \/>\nThe lesson is not that one side is overreacting.<br \/>\nIt is that each side is reacting to the connotations supplied by their own experience. To conservatives suspicious of a repeat of 2020, the video sounded like soft-coup rhetoric. To liberals who watched Trump threaten enemies for years, his post sounded like a promise of vengeance. Neither reaction is fully detached from reality. Neither is purely strategic. Both are emotional interpretations of an environment where the stakes feel existential.<\/p>\n<p>Halperin is right to say the denotative meaning should have settled the argument. But American politics now runs on connotation, not denotation. The shared dictionary has cracked. Tone, history, and identity supply most of the meaning.<\/p>\n<p>The irony is that both sides insist the other is being Orwellian when both are reacting to symbols, not sentences.<\/p>\n<p>What Halperin is really urging is a return to literal reading before emotional reading. He is not asking either side to abandon its concerns. He is asking them to separate the words themselves from the aura they carry.<\/p>\n<p>That is a healthy instinct. But it is not easy in a country where the aura has become the argument.<\/p>\n<p>LF: &#8220;I notice that the MSM tends to take people&#8217;s words too literally, too denotatively&#8230;and the exceptions reveal the MSM bias.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re putting your finger on something real. The mainstream press prides itself on being the sober interpreter of literal meaning, yet the pattern over time shows that it toggles between denotation and connotation depending on who is speaking and what story it wants to tell.<\/p>\n<p>The inconsistency is what exposes the bias.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the clean way to think about it.<\/p>\n<p>I.<br \/>\nWhen the speaker is someone the press trusts or sympathizes with, the MSM defaults to denotation.<br \/>\nIt grants the most literal, charitable reading possible.<br \/>\nIt treats language like a legal contract.<br \/>\nIt focuses on what was said, not what it implied.<\/p>\n<p>So Republican outrage over \u201crefuse illegal orders\u201d gets treated as unserious because the literal meaning is unobjectionable.<br \/>\n\u201cWords mean what they say\u201d becomes the standard.<\/p>\n<p>You see the same pattern in coverage of progressive protests. When activists chant dramatic slogans, the MSM urges the audience to separate rhetoric from intent.<\/p>\n<p>Examples:<br \/>\n\u201cDefund the police doesn\u2019t really mean defund.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cFrom the river to the sea is complicated and contextual.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cIf you read the whole transcript, the line isn\u2019t as bad as it sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Literalism becomes the shield.<br \/>\nConnotation gets flattened.<br \/>\nIntent is assumed to be noble.<\/p>\n<p>II.<br \/>\nBut when the speaker is someone the press distrusts or considers dangerous, the MSM suddenly pivots to connotation.<br \/>\nEverything becomes subtext.<br \/>\nEverything becomes coded language.<br \/>\nEverything becomes a threat.<\/p>\n<p>Trump is the clearest example.<br \/>\nHe gets read connotatively every time.<br \/>\nA stray exaggeration becomes a plan.<br \/>\nA half-joke becomes a doctrine.<br \/>\nA sloppy metaphor becomes a blueprint for authoritarianism.<\/p>\n<p>Even when the denotative meaning is trivial, the connotative meaning gets inflated into the headline.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans in general face this treatment.<br \/>\n\u201cFight like hell\u201d becomes incitement.<br \/>\n\u201cTake our country back\u201d becomes white identity politics.<br \/>\n\u201cDrain the swamp\u201d becomes fascistic purging.<\/p>\n<p>Words get interpreted the way a prosecutor interprets clues.<br \/>\nIntent is assumed to be corrupt.<\/p>\n<p>III.<br \/>\nThe asymmetry rests on a simple but unspoken premise:<br \/>\nSome speakers can be trusted to mean only what they literally say, and others cannot.<br \/>\nOnce the press makes that judgment, it decides which register to use.<\/p>\n<p>Trusted speaker: read them literally.<br \/>\nUntrusted speaker: read them connotatively.<\/p>\n<p>That is why the pattern feels so lopsided.<br \/>\nThe MSM believes it is being consistent on principle, but it is actually being consistent on loyalty.<\/p>\n<p>IV.<br \/>\nWhat this does to the audience is corrosive.<br \/>\nPeople feel gaslit when only one side\u2019s connotations are taken seriously and only one side\u2019s denotations are taken seriously.<br \/>\nThey start watching not the facts but the interpretive frame.<br \/>\nThey begin to assume that meaning is now adjudicated by the tribe, not the text.<\/p>\n<p>And they aren\u2019t wrong.<\/p>\n<p>The six-Democrats video was a perfect example.<br \/>\nThe literal meaning was defensible.<br \/>\nThe connotative meaning was provocative.<br \/>\nThe MSM chose the literal reading because the speakers were aligned with its worldview.<br \/>\nBut if six Republicans had made the same video about Biden, the connotative reading would have dominated the news cycle.<\/p>\n<p>V.<br \/>\nThe press insists it is \u201cjust following the words.\u201d<br \/>\nBut everyone else can see that it is following the speaker.<\/p>\n<p>That is why your observation tracks with the lived experience of millions.<br \/>\nIt isn\u2019t the literal vs connotative distinction that bothers people.<br \/>\nIt\u2019s that the rules change depending on who talks.<\/p>\n<p>Literalism for friends.<br \/>\nConnotation for enemies.<br \/>\nAnd every exception gives the game away.<\/p>\n<p>Mark Halperin emailed his subscribers Nov. 27, 2025: Last week, I made a mistake.<\/p>\n<p>A small one, perhaps, but not small in spirit. And certainly not in keeping with the season, nor with the ethos I try\u2014on my better days\u2014to bring to the Wide World of News, to 2WAY, to \u201cNext Up,\u201d and to the daily civic practice of paying attention with goodwill.<\/p>\n<p>It came the day after the president, the White House, congressional Republicans, and much of conservative media launched a full-throated denunciation of the video by Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, and four of their House colleagues. I took one look and assumed it was the usual Washington pageant: crocodile tears and choreographed outrage, a familiar kind of Student Body Right of modern politics, designed to rouse the base, raise the money, and tilt the battlefield to terrain where MAGA feels most at home.<\/p>\n<p>My intellectual premise then is the same one I hold now on one key point: that to claim members of Congress who say \u201cactive duty service members cannot follow illegal orders\u201d are actually urging them to defy legal orders is an Orwellian inversion\u2014an up-is-down, black-is-white contrivance that deserves little more than a shake of the head and a tip of the cap for sheer organizational audacity.<\/p>\n<p>But here is where I erred: I assumed bad motives. I assumed people were pretending to be outraged.<\/p>\n<p>They weren\u2019t. Many \u2014 most \u2014 were genuinely upset by the words spoken in that video. And that genuine upset deserves more than my glib dismissal.<\/p>\n<p>If we are to reclaim something softer and more generous in the American conversation\u2014if we are to reverse the coarseness that has hardened our national town square for far too long\u2014then that work must include Mark Kelly &#038; Co. pausing long enough to hear why so many of their fellow citizens felt alarmed, even affronted. Instead, the six members of Congress and their backers simply display defiance, fueled by endless cable TV hits and fundraising appeals.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve spent the past few days doing the opposite. Not waving away the concern, not judging it, but sitting with it. Grappling with the ways two sets of sincere Americans can look at the same words and see not merely different interpretations but different realities.<\/p>\n<p>And I would ask those who are outraged by the video to make the reciprocal effort\u2014to understand why millions of their fellow citizens are alarmed by the reaction to that video.<\/p>\n<p>Those reasons include:<\/p>\n<p>a. the real possibility that illegal orders could come from a president whose past conduct makes it imprudent to assume otherwise<\/p>\n<p>b. the apparent lack of faith in our service members\u2014the belief that a simple video could persuade them to abandon their duties or confuse right and wrong<\/p>\n<p>c. the president\u2019s own social-media posts about killing members of Congress<\/p>\n<p>d. the lack of respect for the First Amendment<\/p>\n<p>e. the threat of investigations into members of Congress for speaking their minds, no matter what their intentions<\/p>\n<p>If we could all take a breath, step back, and attempt\u2014not perfectly, but honestly\u2014to understand the nature and intensity of the upset on both sides, we might give our children and grandchildren a Thanksgiving gift more precious than any feast: a glimpse of a kinder civic future. Not to take the politics out of politics, but to endeavor to appreciate another point of view, deeply held.<\/p>\n<p>Two writers today try to do just that.<\/p>\n<p>Karl Rove, in a column lamenting our politics of performance over purpose, wrote:<\/p>\n<p>The person most responsible, however, for accelerating the drive by political figures to focus on social media is the president. Given Donald Trump\u2019s online domination, even generally sensible Democrats and Republicans have stopped being serious and started seeking more retweets and followers. Take the six Congressional Democrats, all veterans of the military or the CIA, who released a video last week encouraging active-duty service personnel to \u201crefuse illegal orders\u201d from Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n<p>One problem: None of the six could name a single illegal order issued by Mr. Trump in the video. So embarrassing. But implying there had been \u201cillegal orders\u201d was enough to give the Video Six their moment to expand their social-media followings.<\/p>\n<p>The need for and wisdom of their video is highly debatable. But what is certain is that Mr. Trump\u2019s response was outrageous. He attacked the video on Truth Social: \u201cThis is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Oh my. The penalty for treason can be death and for sedition up to 20 years in prison\u2026 A commander in chief calling for the execution or imprisonment of members of Congress over a video is mind-blowing\u2026 By doing so, the president also missed a valuable opportunity to talk about things that affect real families\u2026 He\u2019s smart enough to know that but, apparently, couldn\u2019t resist the temptation.<\/p>\n<p>And Kevin Dowd, filling in for his sister Maureen with his trademark astringent wit:<\/p>\n<p>Six congressional Democrats released a shameful video without giving any context encouraging service members to disobey illegal orders, thereby threatening the foundation of our military: the chain of command. But instead of shaming them, Trump posted on Truth Social that it was \u201cSEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!\u201d causing the oily Senator Chris Murphy to warn that the life of every Democratic congressperson was in jeopardy.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s all make a vow\u2014quiet, unshowy, but real\u2014to look at every side of an argument, especially the ones that provoke us most. To listen even when we want to roll our eyes and clench our fists. To make room, even an inch more, for views we resist.<\/p>\n<p>Bari Weiss put it plainly in a recent panel: we need a public square where all voices can be heard, not because all are right but because democracy falters when any are silenced.<\/p>\n<p>If you want a clear statement of my own priorities on this point\u2014on the imperative of bringing and keeping all voices under one roof\u2014listen to Bari\u2019s grand and good aspirations for CBS News:<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PST_3PuRE0M?si=Je9o98MbzHuZQIxk\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Denotation and connotation were the whole story in that six-Democrats video. The denotative meaning was banal. \u201cActive-duty service members cannot follow illegal orders\u201d is straight out of military law. No one disputes it. It is the kind of line that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=165194\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t<!-- All in One SEO 4.9.10 - aioseo.com -->\n\t<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Denotation and connotation were the whole story in that six-Democrats video. The denotative meaning was banal. \u201cActive-duty service members cannot follow illegal orders\u201d is straight out of military law. 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