I paraphrase:

“No man should be above the law”, says almost everyone since the days of ancient Greece.

“If the President does it, it isn’t illegal”, says Richard Nixon.

“If the President does it and it is illegal, he can’t be held responsible”, says Chief Justice John Roberts.

Every individual is responsible for war crimes and the like, even if they were “just following orders”, says the Nurenburg War Crimes tribunal.

(Lincoln Caplan has an article about John Roberts in the latest edition of Harvard Magazine where he says that, when Roberts decided as he did in the case involving Trump’s scope of liability, ruling that the threat of being held accountable could cripple a presidency, he never even considered that a president could act the way President Trump has been acting. He says that not to excuse Roberts, but to try to explain his thinking.)

Along with “no one should be above the law”, a lot of folks have said over the years, “Don’t poke the bear”. In most cases, this seems to be good advice. But if you are going to poke a bear, I would suggest one more thing you should keep in mind: “Don’t hit a wrong note, if you don’t know what note to hit next.” That is a variation on something that jazz pianist Erroll Garner once proclaimed, and which I keep in mind.

There is no question but that the words of Donald Trump (who for the purposes of this post should be considered the bear) proclaiming that six Democratic members of Congress should be arrested and held for sedition, punishable by death are dangerous, stupid and many other despicable things. But it is also true that the bear said what he did only because he was poked and that the Democratic Six (a different group than the Democratic Eight who voted to reopen the government last week) knew they were poking. And they weren’t poking by making quiet, side comments, but by creating a flashy TV spot, addressing members of the U.S. military and others subject to an official command structure that they are not to follow orders if the orders are not legal.

Their saying this does not break new ground. There is probably no one (or there should not be anyone) subject to this instruction who does not always know that this is the rule that they have sworn to follow.

It is very difficult to determine if an order is legal. Take, for example, either the strikes against Venezuelan fishing boats in the Caribbean, or certain orders which can be given to National Guard members patrolling American cities. These orders might be very controversial, some experts arguing one way, some arguing the other. You can’t have each individual deciding for himself, and you can’t have a soldier respond to any order with “Let’s see first what the Supreme Court says”.

The video gave no advice as to how one is to determine what is an illegal order. So what is a 19 year old recruit to do?

The video also has led to threats against the lives of the Six, something that puts them in danger, but to which they have no clear next move, other than to say “Don’t “.

Yes, the video restated the obvious, but it did so in a manner designed to poke the bear. It sure seems to me an unnecessary poke, one which inevitably will stir up more trouble for everyone. And that should have been obvious from the start.

My views may be in the minority, but I think them correct. In voting to reopen the government, the  Democratic Eight were right. In poking the bear without a clear sense of what next notes to play, the Democratic Six were wrong.