Alter or abolish.
Despite those words in the Declaration of Independence, the establishment would have you believe that any effort to resist their power is anti-American.
But they have it backwards.
Under the founders’ framework, the right to “provide new guards” is a right that can also rise to the level of duty.
FOUNDATION
The Declaration of Independence is clear that the reason for government is to protect the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
And when it does a bad job of that, or worse, the opposite?
“Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of 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.”
But it was also clear that you don’t just jump from one act of arbitrary power to the right to revolt in a single step.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes”
At the same time, history proves that people often wait to act far longer than they should. Or they simply refuse to do what needs to be done.
“And accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
This historical truth went all the way back to the ancients. Aristotle made the case in 350 BC that even when the situation demands it, the people who should do something – usually don’t.
“Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel (for they alone can with reason be deemed absolutely unequal), but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.”
But for Thomas Jefferson and company – that was not the situation. They were clear that the present suffering in 1776 wasn’t due to weakness or cowardice – it was patience.
“Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”
And eventually it got to a point of “enough is enough!” Because they knew, as Thomas Gordon warned in Cato’s Letters, a failure to stop tyranny guarantees it will continue, keep getting worse.
“That not to resist any man’s wickedness, is to encourage it.”
THE RIGHT
That brings us to the famous line in the Declaration. Drafted by Jefferson, and edited primarily by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin:
“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.”
As he later told Henry Lee – Jefferson said the goal of the Declaration wasn’t to invent something new, but to state what was already widely accepted by the people.
“Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before”
“It was intended to be an expression of the American mind”
One of the most important expressions of the American mind was the right, as John Allen put it, to resist and restrain tyrants.
“Though you cannot prevent the unconstitutional design of the arbitrary power of the British ministry; yet you have an undoubted right to resist and prevent their reigning over you; or ruining you in the Violation of your laws and rights.”
But that still left a major question unanswered in the lead-up to 1776: when is that line crossed? When does usurpation of power get to the level of reducing the people “under absolute Despotism?”
As John Dickinson put it, there was no clear legal answer. It was a gray area.
“No English lawyer, as we remember, has pointed out precisely the line beyond which, if a king, shall “go,” resistance becomes lawful.”
Despite not having a clearly-written line in the sand, Dickinson insisted a line indeed existed.
“We assert, a line there must be, and shall now proceed with great deference to the judgment of others, to trace that line, according to the ideas we entertain.”
Jefferson’s use of “patient sufference” – like everything else in the Declaration – was quite intentional.
“all it’s authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments of the day”
PATIENCE
Few expressed this particular “harmonising sentiment” better than Simeon Howard. In his widely-read sermon to the “Ancient and Honorable Artillery-Company, in Boston,” he made the religious and philosophical justification for physically defending liberty against “external force and constraint.”
First – it started with the natural right of self-defense.
“NOW for men to stand fast in their liberty means, in general, resisting the attempts that are made against it, in the best and most effectual manner they can.”
That resistance took many forms, like peaceful non-compliance. And Howard explained the American view later expressed in the Declaration: hold the line on a long, patient process before taking more active measures.
“When any one’s liberty is attacked or threatened, he is first to try gentle methods for his safety; to reason with, and persuade the adversary to desist, if there be opportunity for it; or get out of his way, if he can; and if by such means he can prevent the injury, he is to use no other.”
Arthur Lee of Virginia made the same case. The Americans felt they had a moral duty to try everything as long as possible before going to force.
“Yet they are too much enlightened not to know, that they cannot be justified in proceeding to extremities, till they have tried every means of obtaining redress in vain”
In short, the first steps have to be non-violent. But Howard noted that even if you’re successful with petitions, boycotts and non-compliance? The worst tyrants often come back for more.
“BUT the experience of all ages has shewn, that those, who are so unreasonable as to form designs of injuring others, are seldom to be diverted from their purpose by argument and persuasion alone: Notwithstanding all that can be said to shew the injustice and inhumanity of their attempt, they persist in it, till they have gratified the unruly passion which set them to work.”
And Lee pointed to the same truth in the Declaration of Independence: Americans dealt with this patiently and peacefully.
For years.
“The Americans have in fact exhausted every peaceable means of ob|taining redress. for seven years they have incessantly complained and petitioned for redress; their return has invariably been a repetition of injuries, aggravated by the most intolerable insults. There has not been a single instance in which they have complained, without being rebuked, or in which they have been complained against, without be|ing punished”
THE DUTY
But patience that lasts forever isn’t really patience. It’s surrender. That’s where Howard shifted to the right of self-defense and the duty of self-preservation.
“And in this case, what is to be done by the sufferer? Is he to use no other means for his safety, but remonstrance or flight, when these will not secure him? Is he patiently to take the injury and suffer himself to be robbed of his liberty or his life, if the adversary sees fit to take it? Nature certain|ly forbids this tame submission, and loudly calls to a more vigorous defence.”
He showed how the dots were connected in practice – and where the line is crossed.
“Self-preservation is one of the strongest, and a universal principle of the human mind: And this principle allows of every thing necessary to self-defence, opposing force to force, and violence to violence. This is so universally allowed that I need not attempt to prove it.”
Jonathan Mayhew took it to the next level. There’s a point when the tyrant gets so bad that it’s morally criminal to NOT resist.
“And it would be highly criminal in them, not to make use of this means. It would be stupid tameness, and unaccountable folly, for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious and cruel man, to wanton and riot in their misery. And in such a case it would, of the two, be more rational to suppose, that they that did NOT resist, than that they who did, would receive to themselves damnation.”
Samuel Adams gave us the logical conclusion. There’s nothing worse than waging war on your rights – or a failure to defend them against all enemies – foreign or domestic.
“The people hold the Invasion of their Rights & Liberties the most horrid rebellion and a Neglect to defend them against any Power whatsoever the highest Treason.”
Ultimately, as John Locke made clear, the best way to prevent things from getting this bad in the first place? Make them an offer they can’t refuse.
“The properest way to prevent the evil, is to shew them the danger and injustice of it, who are under the greatest temptation to run into it.”
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