J'Accuse!
In a Republic, informed citizens agree to follow the general will of the governed even against their own sensibilities. In fact, for a Republic to survive, I insist that our tolerance for political difference and even bad actions must extend well beyond the horizon of our preferences. In America, It has been that way for a long time--and many of us have put fist in mouth and followed, reluctantly but with the knowledge that the system provides a chance to make things better. I have done so through the criminality of Nixon, Reagan, and W; though I disagreed vehemently with their policies and heinous actions. Somehow the system worked, imperfectly, but sufficiently well to present a check on despotism, and it provided a way for the people to have a chance to right the ship of state,
But there ARE limits to what ought to be tolerated, and if the Republican party continues to act as toadies to an unhinged tyrant and if they go beyond the point of protecting the fool to the edge of facilitating general and long-term mayhem while disabling any checks on grotesque abuses of power, then I suggest that they will have expunged the necessary preconditions of consensuality that bind our Republic.
Do we have an obligation to allow someone to destroy the planet our children hope to dwell in?
We work to make the Earth, our home, a reason to live--in tandem (in our nested set within the larger) we work to make this union more perfect, more just, more democratic. But our old (and to me precious) agreement is NOT a suicide pact. We are not required to die w/o good cause, AND we are never required to shovel our children into the insatiable mouth of Moloch.
In short, we are free people with choice. We have not given up our condition of vigilance. Under extreme circumstances, we have a responsibility to disobey.