We must realize that today's Establishment is the new George III.
Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know.
If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.
— Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
"Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God." It was Thomas Jefferson’s personal motto. Ben Franklin proposed that it appear on the Great Seal of the United States [1]. It was the ultimate moral justification for the American Revolution: As British subjects, our Founding Fathers owed allegiance to the King, but not to a king who had become a tyrant.
The Legal Right To Kill Tyrants
The legal and moral right to kill a tyrant -- whether he wears a crown, a black robe, or a blue suit -- is as old as Anglo-American society itself. Bishop John of Salisbury observed some eight centuries ago that "[t]o kill a tyrant is not merely lawful, but right and just ... the law rightly takes arms against him who disarms the laws, and the public power rages in fury against him who strives to bring to nought the public force." [source] Our Founding Fathers defined "tyranny" in terms of unbounded power and couched the right of rebellion against it in terms of self-defense, as shown by this pronouncement of the Continental Congress:
If it was possible for men, who exercise their reason to believe, that the divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these colonies might at least require from the parliament of Great-Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them, has been granted to that body. ...
We are reduced to the alternative of chusing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force. -- The latter is our choice. -- We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.
John Dickenson and Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, Continental Congress (U.S.), Jul. 6, 1775 (emphasis added).
To the Framers, this right did not belong to "the people" at large but rather, was the birthright of every individual citizen. As Connecticut's Roger Sherman -- an able lawyer, judge, legislator, who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution -- observed in the very halls of Congress,
[C]onceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.
Roger Sherman, 14 Debates in the House of Representatives, ed. Linda Grand De Pauw. (Balt., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972), 92-3 (emphasis added).
In his inimitable manner, Jefferson defines the relevant terms: "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." [source] Patrick Henry adds, "nothing will preserve [the public liberty] but downright force." Patrick Henry, 3 Elliot, Debates at 45 (Virginia Convention, June 5, 1788).
The Defense Of Liberty Is a "Grave Duty"
The individual’s fundamental right to be free from tyrannical and arbitrary rule, and concomitant right to resort to lethal violence where necessary to secure that right, has been universally embraced. As one notorious radical rabble-rouser put it:
Human rights cannot be given in the form of concessions. Man is born with them and seeks to realize them in the course of his life. And if they are not realized or experienced, then man rebels. And it cannot be otherwise, because he is a man. His sense of honor expects it. [source]
This bold statement comes not from Stalin, Mao, or Che Guevara but rather, that penultimate prince of peace, Pope John Paul II. Having lived under the iron fist of Communism, he understood this fact on a visceral level. He adds in an encyclical that violent results are morally "attributable to the aggressor whose action brought it about." [source] Indeed, in the words of His Holiness, it is not so much a right as it is a "grave duty." Id.
But as is the case with all the solemn duties attendant to American citizenship, it is not one that should ever be undertaken lightly. While Monica Gooding took an oath of fealty to her pResident, our oath of citizenship mandates that we "will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic." And this duty inescapably embraces, where absolutely necessary, the use of lethal force.
Murder is the unjustifiable killing of a human being with malice aforethought. However, as some of the most brilliant men who have ever graced this planet with their intellects -- from Cicero to Jefferson -- have furnished an utterly compelling justification for it, the killing of a tyrant is both legally and morally permissible. By way of example, Colorado law acknowledges this through its "choice of evils" statute. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-1-702(1) (incorporating the pre-existing common law). Here, the choice of evils is whether to subject each and every one of your inalienable, God-given rights to random and arbitrary deprivation by a tyrant, or to take said tyrant’s life in an act of self-defense. Though a trifling minority might disagree, for most freedom-loving Americans, the decision is easy ... or at least, it was to Samuel Adams:
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams, Speech (at the Philadelphia State House), Aug. 1, 1776.
Surely, it is within the prerogative of the aggrieved individual to assail the tyrant who has wrongfully deprived him of his natural liberties. And just as surely, as Jefferson rightly observed, no nation can ever hope to "preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance." [source]
"A Long Train Of Usurpations"
Although the right to resort to violent revolution where necessary cannot be questioned, the need to resort to it should always be. Recognizing this, our Founding Fathers stated their case for the world to hear:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
The conditions our Founding Fathers endured are disconcertingly similar to those we see under our own modern King George II. Our courts bear a more striking resemblance to the Star Chamber of the Stuarts than any legitimate tribunal, with many judges having as much loyalty to their King as they do disdain for the Constitution and our laws. What passes for our "justice" system has become a blunt instrument of official oppression, persecuting political opponents and whistleblowers while permitting official corruption on an industrial scale. Through "signing statements," our pResident has declared himself to be above the law. Our government has become an international pariah, embroiling us in bloody and financially ruinous wars without cause or provocation, rummaging through our homes and possessions at will, and following our every move. Our "elections" are a transparent sham, our "elected representatives" are scarcely more than bought-and-paid-for corporate shills (even Hillary can be implicated), and our "mass media" is a corporate propaganda mill. Our essential infrastructure is rotting, and our public schools are downright rotten. Our national Treasury has been boldly looted by a consortium of common criminals, and our future has been mortgaged to the hilt. These facts, submitted to a candid world, raise the central question posed by our Founding Fathers:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
The question our Founding Fathers faced is one I fear we shall face in short order: Are these problems mere transient ones that our 'system' can adequately fix (e.g., via the mechanism of impeachment), or do they constitute "a long train of abuses and usurpations," requiring a more drastic surgery?
The Constitution IS the Solution
Even if perchance it befell us to depose our self-declared boy-king and his courtiers by force, it would be sheer folly to throw out the baby (our Constitution) with the bathwater. Conversely, if we manage to survive this storm intact, it is incumbent upon us to install legal mechanisms sufficient to preclude a repeat. And again, Thomas Jefferson leads us to the light.
If you want to see the face of tyranny, look in the mirror. Tyrants are people not unlike you and me, whose all-too-common character weaknesses make them unfit to be trusted with unbounded power. See, e.g., John Adams, Defence of the Constitutions, Vol. I, Letter XXVI (to Dr. Price). [source] People who have power always crave more, will do almost anything to expand it, and will most certainly lord it over you if you let them. As Andrew Jackson once said, eternal vigilance "is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." [source]
The system of government Jefferson bequeathed to us is predicated on a sensible presumption, borne out by millenia of experience, that no one can be trusted with power. Those who have it often become intoxicated by it, invariably craving more of it. Those who don’t have it yearn to be free from others’ domination; where necessary, they will kill to secure their liberty. As a violent revolution is inherently destructive to society, the Framers devised a system of limited government, wherein one person (or a small cadre of people) would find it difficult to obtain despotic power and thereby, obviate the need for violence. As Jefferson observed in his Notes on the State of Virginia:
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others. [source]
Having had the benefit of experience, Jefferson perceived in later years that the Constitution suffered from a fatal flaw: the federal judiciary was not only independent, but completely unaccountable to the people they served. He wrote, "The original error [was in] establishing a judiciary independent of the nation, and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceedings to its own will." [source] But as we have witnessed in the scandal involving the firing of U.S. Attorneys, judges aren't the only ones who can declare themselves to be beyond the law, thus transcending the legal limits of their position. The only practical long-term solution to this problem I can see is to make every public servant personally accountable to the people they serve.
Regardless of whether you believe that a revolution is now in order, it cannot be disputed that Andrew Jackson's counsel of vigilance is warranted today. And even if you could not be counted among the oppressed, it behooves you to have a heightened concern for those who are. Few would follow the sterling example of Martin Luther King, who answered the Macedonian call of his brothers because he understood that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." [source] Most are like Pastor Martin Niemöller, who learned the hard way in a Nazi concentration camp that when you fail to come to the aid of your brother in need, you may find one day to your chagrin that no one is left to come to yours.[2] But watch we must, for as Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals observes wryly, it is "a mistake a free people gets to make only once." [3]
Perilous times are ahead. But as His Holiness counseled, "Be not afraid."
Learn more about the decrepit state of our courts at knowyourcourts.com.
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Endnotes:
[1] [Source] The quote itself is attributed to British lawyer John Bradshaw, who played an crucial role in the regicide of King Charles I ... and was eventually hanged for it.
[2]Pastor Niemöller’s famous quote ("In Germany, they first came for the Communists....") is allegedly sourced in a speech given at Columbia Theological Seminary; while there is considerable debate as to what he actually said, the gravamen of what he said is not in substantive dispute. See, http://www.serendipity.li/...
[3] Silveira v. Lockyer, 328 F.3d 567, 2003.C09.0000276, ¶22 (9th Cir. 2003) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from denial of reh. en banc).