There's a must-read piece over at Esquire by Lt. Col. Robert Bateman dealing with the meaning of oaths and a forgotten man The part in which he explains what being an unreconstructed Yankee amounts to is worth reading all by itself in these days when the Civil War is being refought (and all too often lost) wherever the "Party of Lincoln" has seized power. (If you want some schadenfreude, do a search at the NY Times on North Carolina, and look at the headlines that come up.)
Questions about the Constitution, rights, and what IS patriotism have been co-opted by the Right as they've pushed the Overton Window. They're pushing through a radical agenda wherever they can, and sabotaging everywhere else.
Bateman has an argument that will stop many of them dead in their tracks. It came at a time when his life was going through a not too good place.
What followed was stereotypical for a divorce of this sort. I spent a lot of time after work going to local bars. All of them within walking distance from my apartment on a hillside known as Marye’s Heights, in the town where I lived. This was 2002.
Being disinclined to sociability at the time, when prompted by a fellow barfly into a conversation I did not feel like having, I would assess my interrogator. If he fit the profile (and so many did), I would counter-present a statement as a way of starting a “conversation.” That “profile” had nothing to do with socio-economic status, but it did have a hell of a lot to do with race, and the bugaboo of “heritage.” At least “heritage” as it is interpreted in rural Virginia anyway. Regardless of the topic he was trying to engage me on, I would parry. Then I would start a new conversation. My entree was, “I think that Robert E. Lee, as a traitor and betrayer of his solemn oath before God and the Constitution, was a much greater terrorist than Osama Bin Ladin… after all, Lee killed many more Americans than Bin Ladin, and almost destroyed the United States. What do you think?”
emphasis added
That's a pretty intense statement. Now think about Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden. Think about the matter of personal honor and loyalty, and for what little it gets traded away.
Read the whole thing - the Civil War isn't over. The whole argument whether or not we are going to have an effective national government and just who exactly it answers to has not gone away.