Loyalty Oaths

The other night I was thumbing through Sito's book and came across a facsimile of Local 839's loyalty oath -- a document that all union officers were required to sign in the fifties and sixties... The undersigned, being duly sworn, deposes and says: 1) I am a responsible office of the union named below. 2) I am not a member of the Communist Party or affiliated with such party. 3) I do not believe in, and I am not a member of nor do I support any organization that believes in or teaches, the overthrow of the United States Government by force or by any illegal or unconstitutional methods... I blew in here a decade and a half ago, and praise Allah, I didn't have to sign any such pledge. But the times don't seem all that much different now, do they? Then, Godless Communism was the threat. Today it's Islamofascism. Always got to be something. (Which reminds me. Those documents up at the top of this post? They're British LOYALTY OATHS from 1780.)