Is a New American Revolution Morally Justified?

The United States was founded on a revolutionary ideology that displaced the hierarchical pattern of Europe with a more egalitarian one. More importantly, the ideology of the American revolution was liberal, Lockean, and based on the principle that the state derives limited rights from the direct consent of the governed. Locke did not doubt that there is a right to revolution when the state exceeds the bounds that individuals have set. If one individual feels that the state has exceeded its bounds, he is deterred from revolution by the fact that he will fail unless a majority of his compatriots agree with him. Thus, Locke does not argue that we ever give up the right to revolution but that there are practical reasons to avoid pursuing it recklessly. Thus, Jefferson's claim that there needs to be a revolution every twenty years was tempered by his calling his own election to the presidency in 1800 a revolution. By then, Jefferson had acceded to most of the Federalists' principles, so he had reduced the definition of revolution considerably.

The process by which taxes are set in the United States is less democratic and reflective of popular will than it was in colonial America just prior to the Revolutionary War. Before 1730 the colonies were with exceptions independent of British rule, but beginning in the 1730s Parliament passed the Molasses, Hat and Iron Acts and, more seriously, after 1763 imposed several taxes, such as the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act and the Quartering Act which they had the right to do, followed by the Townshend Acts (1767) and the Coercive or Intolerable Acts (1774). The colonists objected to the process by which the taxes were set, and this led to the Revolutionary War.

Today, the process by which taxes are set depends on a government that purports to represent over 300 million Americans (about 128 million or 61% of whom vote for President). In colonial times, there were about three million Americans. In colonial times the ratio of the number of Congressional representatives to population was 3,000 to one. Today it is 500,000 to one. In colonial times, a disaffected American could follow Roger Williams and leave his colony to found a new one. Today, land is held by the federal government or the people. There is nowhere else to go to escape factional tyranny.

The founders did not believe in unrestrained democracy because they feared that it would breach the liberal principles on which the nation was founded. The Progressives, whom historians such as Gabriel Kolko, William Appleman Williams, James Weinstein and Murray Rothbard have argued represented the interests of big business while claiming to represent "democracy", argued against liberal constraints on democracy. Since the Progressive era, there has been increasing tyranny of special interests, specifically the very big business interests whom the Progressives laughably believed they controlled through the Sherman Anti-trust Act and the Federal Trade Commission.

Thus, America today is characterized by much greater tyranny than it was in the colonial era. This is compounded by the rejection of liberalism by America's other-directed elites and their willingness to unrestrainedly abuse state power to extract hard-earned earnings from ordinary Americans in the interests of incompetently conceived and inevitably corrupt government projects.

There is little doubt that Americans can morally bear arms against the current government in Washington. There are practical reasons why they may not. However, it is a consideration that individualists need to begin considering. This is not a government that represents me. I do not believe that the taxes I pay go for any purpose that I can support. The federal government is suppressive and immoral, as is the state government. Things have not yet gotten bad enough that a sufficiently large percentage of the nation will agree (the tipping point is probably 30 or 40 percent), but I think that there is a good chance, given current Federal Reserve and government attitudes and policies, that this can become a reality.

John Locke and Supreme Court Rebellion

In his Second Treatise on Government (the first treatise having been a response to Sir Robert Filmer's argument in favor of the divine right of kings) John Locke argues for a liberal state that emphasizes freedom based on his argument that humanity in a state of nature enjoys freedom, and since people do not voluntarily give up that which they enjoy, government is moral only if its institution enhances freedom by protecting life and property. Government ought to protect property because most value comes from labor, labor can be converted into money and money does not spoil, so that property can be enlarged beyond use (paragraphs 45-8). In essence, the most talented can be motivated to expand production and so increase wealth beyond use and therefore society becomes wealthier because of the existence of money and the right to property. Despite two centuries' ideological objections by leveling, socialist, Marxist, pragmatist and deconstructionist academics, and Locke's dependence on a pre-marginalist labor theory of value, Locke's argument was pragmatically correct. Societies that retained the liberal impulse benefited, and as the United States has sacrificed the liberal impulse since the 1910s in favor of European-style social democracy, its wealth and the public's earning power has declined.

A major part of Locke's argument is that there is a right to revolution. He may focus on this because he wrote the Second Treatise at the time of the Whigs' Glorious Revolution of 1688 (it was first published in 1689). Monarchies, Locke argues (paragraph 90) are inconsistent with civil society because civil society is created to establish a mechanism by which conflict among individuals can be resolved peaceably, namely the courts, and if an absolute monarch controls the courts then there can be no civil society to resolve conflict between the monarch and members of the general public, that is, that the public is in a potentially violent state of nature with respect to any absolute monarch:

"Hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil-government at all: for the end of civil society, being to avoid and remedy those inconveniences of the state of nature, which necessarily follow from every man's being judge in his own case, by setting up a known authority, to which every one of that society may appeal upon any injury received, or controversy that may arise, and which every one of the society ought to obey; where-ever any persons are, who have not such an authority to appeal to, for the decision of any difference between them, there those persons are still in the state of nature; and so is every absolute prince, in respect of those who are under his dominion"

Hence the necessity of an "appeal to heaven" under conditions of abuse by an absolute monarch.

Locke argues that just because we are born under a government, it does not necessarily mean that we are subjects to it. Rather, we become subject to a government by choice (paragraph 116):

"for those, who would persuade us that by being born under any government, we are naturally subjects to it, and have no more any title or pretence to the freedom of the state of nature, have no other reason...to produce for it, but only because our fathers or progenitors passed away their natural liberty, and thereby bound up themselves and their posterity to a perpetual subjection to the government, which they themselves submitted to. It is true that whatever engagements or promises any one has made for himself, he is under the obligation of them, but cannot, by an compact whatsoever, bind his children or posterity: for his son, when a man, being altogether as free as the father, any act of the father can no more give away the liberty of the son, than it can of any body else...

and (paragraph 122):

"But submitting to the laws of any country, living quietly, and enjoying privileges and protection under them, makes not a man a member of that society: this is only a local protection and homage due to and from all those, who, not being in a state of war, come within the territories belonging to any government, to all parts whereof the force of its laws extends. But this no more makes a man a member of that society, a perpetual subject of that common-wealth, than it would make a man subject to another in whose family he found it convenient to abide for some time; though whilst he continued in it, he were obliged to comply with the laws, and submit to the government he found there

Men and women enter into society because in a state of nature they are exposed to the "invasion of others" (paragraph 123):

"for all being kings much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justices, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very insecure. This makes him willing to quit a condition, which, however, free, is full of fears and continual dangers: and it is not without reason, that he seeks out and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property."

Critical to maintaining civil society is a legislature that does not and cannot exercise arbitrary or absolute (paragraph 135) authority, standing laws and authorized judges (paragraph 136, 137).

The end of government is the good of the community (paragraph 163) and when power is in the hands of a magistrate its purpose must be (paragraph 171):

"to preserve the members of that society in their lives, liberties and possessions; and so cannot be an absolute, arbitrary power over their lives and fortunes, which are as much possible to be preserved...And this power has its original only from compact and agreement, and the mutual consent of those who make up the community."

Obviously, if a society is based upon agreement, then it can be dissolved. Locke argues that Anglo Saxon culture was conservative (and the same is likely true of American culture) so that a right of revolution would be rarely exercised. But (paragraph 212 &214):

"When any one, or more, shall take upon them to make laws, whom the people have not appointed so to do, they make laws without authority which the people are not therefore bound to obey; by which means they come again to be out of subjection, and may constitute to themselves a new legislature, as they think best, being in full liberty to resist the force of those, who without authority would impose any thing upon them. Every one is at the disposure of his own will, when those who had, by the delegation of the society, the declaring of the public will, are excluded from it, and others usurp the place, who have no such authority or delegation...Whoever introduces new laws, not being thereunto authorized by the fundamental appointments of the society, or subverts the old, disowns and overturns the power by which they were made and so sets up a new legislative."

and (paragraph 227):

"when either the legislative is changed, or the legislators act contrary to the end for which they were constituted; those who are guilty are guilty of rebellion; for if any one by force takes away the established legislative of any society, and the laws by them made, pursuant to their trust, he thereby takes away the umpirage which every one had consented to, for a peaceable decision of all their controversies, and a bar to the state of war amongst them. They, who remove, or change the legislative, take away this decisive power, which no body can have, but by the appointment and consent of the people; and so destroying the authority which the people did, and no body else can set up, and introducing a power which the people hat not authorized, they actually introduce a state of war, which is that of force without authority; and thus by removing the legislative established by the society (in whose decisions the people acquiesced and united, as to that of their own will) they untie the knot and expose the people a-new to the state of war. And if those themselves, as has been shewn, can no less esteemed so; when they, who were set up for the protection and preservation of the people, their liberties and properties, shall by force invade and endeavor to take them away..."

Not being knowledgeable about the US Supreme Court, my understanding is that there are two basic views of Constitutional interpretation. One is that the Constitution needs to be interpreted in light of the intentions of the Founding Fathers and that in choosing to reside in America many Americans expressly commit themselves to this compact, and those who do not live here as peaceable strangers for want of a better place. Under this view the Constitution can be amended by two thirds vote of Congress and three fourths vote of the state legislatures or at a convention called by two thirds of the state legislatures and ratification by three fourths of the state legislatures. This model is consistent with Locke's ideas and is likely the way that the Founding Fathers anticipated the Constitution would be changed and the Supreme Court would interpret it. Madison, for example, anticipated problems with the republic as manufacturing grew and the country became larger. If there had been an alternative intent as to how to change the Constitution under such circumstances, it would have been written into the Constitution and the amendment process made easier.

The second model is that the Constitution is a living agreement that the Supreme Court can change. The Supreme Court itself has increasingly relied on this interpretation. For example, in elimination of the death penalty for child molestation this past June the Court relied on multiple extensions of the Constitution to the states and the meaning of "cruel and unusual punishment". This kind of extension may have begun in part for two reasonable purposes: how to adjust the Constitution to the growth of big business and civil rights abuses. These two reasons may have clouded the public consciousness about the role that the Supreme Court ought to be playing.

The Constitution does not provide for, and no one as far as I know has proposed a constitutional amendment to permit, the Supreme Court to legislate changing mores. Rather, this is an unauthorized usurpation of legislative authority. The Supreme Court has arrogated power and can exercise it arbitrarily based on its claim to be a moral interpreter of organic social change. This alone is consistent with the grounds that John Locke describes for revolution. The Supreme Court, in arrogating legislative authority through its one-sided claim to be an organic interpreter exists in a "state of nature" to the general public. No amount of legalistic argument or verbal acrobatics can change that.

But it gets worse. It does not seem likely that the Supreme Court's traditional claim to being a moral interpreter on behalf of society can hold true. The American public has increasingly divided into three camps: a small conservative camp, a small left-wing social democratic and a large moderate camp. The small conservative camp is made of traditionalists and a small number of disgruntled intellectuals. The social democratic camp is made up of university-trained professionals, such as attorneys, university professors, elite investment bankers and feminists. The large center is a more general cross section of American life.

There is little doubt that a disproportionate share of the Supreme Court Justices are Ivy League trained attorneys from elitist backgrounds and so fall into the social democratic camp. Their ideology deviates from the mainstream of America, and so they can no longer claim to fill the role of being a Constitutional interpreter on behalf of changing social norms. The social norms in which the Justices believe are deviant from the mainstream of America.

There needs to be a reassessment of the role that the Supreme Court plays, and the extent to which the "living interpretation" of the Constitution has exceeded its lawful bounds. Just having read the Second Treatise, it seems to me that Locke expressly supports a revolution against the usurpations in which the Supreme Court has already engaged.

John Lukacs on Hitler

"But here we come to the mistaken view that many conservatives adopted during the twentieth century and that they have even now. This is that the rise of nationalist anti-liberalism meant a great historical reaction against 1789.* In 1933 and 1934 the then-leading German conservative, Franz von Papen, said that what was happening in Germany in 1933 was the great answer of history against the largely French-inspired idea of 1789 (And this is the enduring mistake of many conservatives, who despise the "Left" more than they distance themselves from "extremists" on the "Right".) But Hitler was someone very different from a counterrevolutionary; and the German 1933 was not a counterrevolutionary movement. Nothing was further from Hitler (or even from Mussolini, or from Peron, etc., etc.) than to see anything good in monarchy or aristocracy (let alone in the world of the eighteenth century). He was a populist; and a revolutionary; and at least in some ways, a democrat. Evidences of this, in his words and acts, could fill a small book."

----John Lukacs
Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, 248 pp.

*The French Revolution occurred in 1789.