Opinion
“To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men naturally live in, and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.” ~“The Second Treatise on Civil Government,” by John Locke, one of the Great Classical Philosophers (born August 29, 1632, died October 28, 1704).
This is a follow-up to our previous article, posted in Ammoland Shooting Sports News, on February 20, 2024, and titled, “Is Armed Rebellion a Legal Right for Americans?”
Our Nation’s true Patriots, who cherish the right of the people to keep and bear arms against the incursion of tyranny, would view the question as rhetorical.
The Radical Left Obstructors and Destructors of our Free Republic would likely see the question as inane. Regardless, the question is serious, of perennial significance, and deserving of our attention. The question is not to be taken lightly, and it is not to be taken as inane. This is the principal question for us today. How one answers it has repercussions for our Country: Exclaiming eternal life for our Republic or marking its expiration date.
No less so for the Framers of our Constitution, this question was and is the ultimate, all-important question, ever insistent and demanding—not something to be indefinitely deferred or rebuffed.
It served as the focus of their work in creating a Nation unlike the world had ever seen. The American people are and remain the sole sovereign over the Government.
Government Tyranny violates a sacred trust between the people and the Government.
Tyranny amounts to the unlawful usurpation of the sovereignty of the authority of the American people over the Government. Such usurpation is inconsistent with the limited powers of the Government, established in the Articles of the Constitution.
Surely, the American people had [and have] the moral right to resist Tyranny—with force of arms if need be—if, as they found necessary, must be, and as it happened, at a singular moment in time in our history (and that of the world) came to be.
America’s Patriots made their moral argument plain by crafting their “Declaration of Independence” (embedded above & below) from Tyranny—a blatant affront to the legally constituted authority, the British Monarchy, to whom they owed allegiance, however begrudgingly they must give to it.
The English philosopher John Locke directly and profoundly influenced our Nation’s “Declaration of Independence.” The Framers of the U.S. Constitution studied the political-philosophical works of John Locke carefully, intensely, and profusely. See, e.g., the article in Brittanica.
That sacred document provided the moral impetus for the American people to rebel against Tyranny, operating against the Monarch’s “legal” authority to reign over them.
The “Declaration of Independence” content is grounded on Natural, Eternal God-given Law. It is not grounded on the Laws of Man or of Man’s artifice—Government.
Man has the moral right and the moral duty to resist Tyranny by all means necessary to secure Freedom and Liberty to which he is entitled under Divine Law. That fact is plain.
But, commensurate with the “Moral Right” and Duty, do Americans have the “Legal Right” and obligation to resist Tyranny?
Americans did not have a legal right to rebel against the Tyranny of an unjust British Ruler—only the moral right to do so, knowing full well they would be hanged as traitors to “The Crown” if they failed in their endeavor. Fortunately for all of us, they succeeded admirably.
But the pressing question for us Americans today is this: Is Armed Rebellion against Tyranny a Legal Right, apart from a Moral Imperative, for Americans?
Some scholars say the Framers did answer this principal and insistent question they had posed for themselves and claim they responded with a resounding “no.”
Other scholars demonstrate hesitancy before volunteering their response, with either a “yes” or “no.”
We, however, do not respond “no” to the question, nor will a person sense any hesitancy in our voice. We respond with a resounding “yes,” and from our research, we argue the Founders of our Republic, the Framers of our Constitution, did so as well.
Both the “Legal Right” and the “Moral Right” are encapsulated in the Second Amendment of our Nation’s Bill of Rights of our Constitution.
How did the leading minds among America’s First Patriots hammer this out? What brought them to consider and to include our Nation’s Bill of Rights, one year after ratification of the Articles of the Constitution?
They began with the premise that “Freedom and Liberty” must be more than a fanciful desire or desirous yet confoundingly difficult aim.
The manifestation of “Freedom And Liberty” into reality was, for them, not merely an academic exercise—a mere Utopian dream—something to come to pass at some point, hopefully in the future, perhaps, but not during their time. It was and is the quintessential foundation upon which an inchoate Nation would come to fruition, else it ought not to come to be. They knew that it would never come to be and persist if they did not construct a tenable basis for it.
“Freedom and Liberty” are inconsistent with “Tyranny.” There is no common ground on this. It is one or the other—one cannot have a little of each.
Consider: Modern-day CCP China operates as a brutal Dictatorship. This is plain to all. Singapore is viewed as a “Benign” Dictatorship if one can allow for an oxymoron here. The Governments of both, however, are equally Tyrannical: Not just a little bit in the case of one and not the other. Just try expressing a contrary thought. Just try making a case for keeping and bearing arms in either Country or following through with your conviction. See where that takes you. See what that gets you.
The conundrum for America’s intellectual minds in hammering out a Constitution after the American Revolution involved first deciding whether their Nation should suffer a strong, centralized “Federal” Government.
These learned men knew that Government—all Government—bears the seeds of Tyranny within it. It is the devil incarnate. They harbored no illusion about that.
They had not long before pointed to the moral right of the American people to confront Tyranny head-on, as these men and many thousands more Patriots had fought and died to defeat Tyranny—not an easy task, and costly, in lives, not just in money, but wholly necessary. These First Patriots sought to avoid Tyranny, like the plague, and fully intended to do so in this nascent Nation, if at all humanly possible.
The Framers of the Constitution determined—some of them, but not all, and many more of them, reluctantly—that this fledgling Nation, like any other nation, needed a centralized (“Federal”) Government and one with a standing army.
But that Government would carry within itself the seeds of Tyranny, no matter what they did to prevent such occurrence. They knew this. They did not doubt it. The best they could do is work some legerdemain within the Articles of the Constitution to forestall this, to hamper the rise of Tyranny. That is the inference that many academic scholars draw. But that inference implies the Government can install itself as a Tyranny, and do so legally were there no effective legal remedy to counter it.
That idea conflicts with the notion the American people are sovereign over Government—a proposition many scholars reject, except in a vacuous colloquial sense, but it is one we take as axiomatic and purposeful.
Since the Tyranny of Government could be forestalled but never prevented at best, it behooves the people, the ultimate sovereign and final arbiter over Government, to exert control over Government as a parent must control a child that tends to be a wayward brat.
The insistent question for the Founders of our Republic, though, was how to conform the moral right of the “Declaration of Independence” into law, to protect a Free and Sovereign American people against the prospect of a Tyrannical Government that would invariably come to pass …and that has come to pass with a vengeance today.
For, if no legal antecedent existed for countering Tyranny, then the Tyrant could claim before the fact that rebellion against that Tyranny is never legally and constitutionally justified, notwithstanding the moral imperative the people may feel for doing so.
The Tyrant can claim a “legal” right to clamp down on the armed citizenry to defang the citizenry before the fact because he has the “consent of the governed.” And he would have reason to do so, for self-protection, to safeguard his Tyranny.
We see this happening, albeit couched in propagandistic slogans such as “America must Stop Gun Violence” and “No one needs an ‘Assault Weapon’ in a civilized society.” This is a mere absurd deflection to grab inattentive Americans emotionally. The aim is to stunt the growth of the Americans’ intellect and inhibit the use of Americans’ rational faculties, preventing them from seeing through the charade.
The Constitution the Framers constructed—the Articles alone—has not sufficed to protect the Common Man from the wiles of powerful, ruthless forces that have captured the Government, commandeering it for their own selfish uses against the interests of the American people.
The Framers knew the Articles would provide, at best, a stopgap—nothing more.
So, the Framers feared Tyranny would come to America at some point—not merely could come to America. They would not be surprised that it has come to America, albeit it has taken two centuries for it to become glaringly obvious.
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms,” a right that “shall not be infringed”, serves as the ultimate failsafe to thwart tyranny.
The Second Amendment operates as the embodiment of the Nation’s Declaration of Independence, codified in the Constitution.
The Second Amendment, therefore, serves a dual purpose.
It sanctifies, in writing, the preeminent Moral God-given Natural Law Mandate in the framework of Constitutional Law.
The Antifederalists, among the Framers, insisted on codifying the moral imperative and prerogative in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
Why did they persevere in this? They did so for two reasons:
- First, once the Eternal Moral Right to confront and extinguish Tyranny is committed, established, and dedicated to writing, a Tyrant cannot thereafter pretend it doesn’t exist. The Tyrant cannot reasonably proclaim an unjust reign to be righteous and just. Since it is not, the people retain the moral right to depose the Tyrant by force of arms if need be.
- Second, since etched (codified in writing) in the Constitution, the Moral Right to thwart Tyranny by force of arms, if need be, operates as the Legal Mechanism through which the people may lawfully depose the Tyrant.
So, the “Declaration of Independence” did make its way into the U.S. Constitution, after all, somewhat subtly, no doubt, but still plain enough for even an obtuse Tyrant to recognize, and at its peril were it to fail to heed.
As many have stated here before, “Stay Heavily Armed and Very Dangerous.”
Declaration of Independence United States of America
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