# XV explained — No Treason

> Chapter companion for No Treason by Lysander Spooner.

## What happens

The chapter argues that soldiers' oaths of allegiance and service to the United States government are void because the United States is not a legitimate corporation or nation, and therefore such oaths are made to nobody and carry no obligation.

## Themes in this chapter

### Individual Natural Rights

The chapter asserts the primacy of individual conscience and judgment over government commands, arguing that a soldier cannot morally surrender his right to decide on the justice of killing.

### Constitution as Dead Contract

The argument that the United States is not a legitimate corporation or nation implies that the constitutional compact is void, and thus oaths to it are meaningless.

## Character check-ins

### a man

The soldier who takes the oath, whose judgment and conscience are overridden by the command to kill.

### Unknown

The speaker or authorial voice presenting the argument against the legitimacy of oaths.

## Key lines

> Independently of the criminality of an oath, that, for a given number of years, he will kill all whom he may be commanded to kill, without exercising his own judgment or conscience as to the justice or necessity of such killing, there is this further reason why a soldier’s oath is of no obligation, viz. that, like all the other oaths that have now been mentioned, it is given to nobody.

Beyond the inherent wrongness of swearing to kill on command without moral reflection, a soldier's oath is void because it is made to a non-existent entity.

_The core argument: oaths to an illegitimate government are contracts with no counterparty._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/no_treason_se/chapters/xv
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/no_treason_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/no_treason_se/chapters