This excerpt is taken from the book, ‘Seedtime of the Republic’ by Clinton Rossiter. Page 445.
It is my humble and accurate opinion that every citizen of the Unites States should read this book. This is a three part book. You may find and read “The Political Thought of the American Revolution” as a book itself, it is part 3 of ‘Seedtime’. I put this section below because I feel it needs to be spread around and stimulate knowledge here and now.
“Under normal operating conditions of free society and constitutional government, representations and jury trial form the last and firmest line of defense against arbitrary power. When circumstances are abnormal, when this line of defense is irreparably breached, the people may resort to the great right of resistance. Government is divine, and ordinance of God, but governors are human, deriving all power from the consent of the governed. When rulers flout the terms under which they were granted this power, the people are placed in a position where they may, rather must, act to restore ordered liberty.
The right of resistance is the last refuge of a while people unable to protect their lives, liberties, and properties by normal constitutional methods; it cannot be stretched to justify the coup d’état of a militant minority dedicated to the building of a new order. The people have a duty to be peaceful and law-abiding, and history demonstrated that they can be counted on never to resist except under overriding compulsion and to temper their methods to the nature and degree of oppression. The only possible outcome of a full reversion of power to the people is a new contract with new rulers under new terms of reciprocal obedience and protection. God granted men the right of resistance to help them preserve orderly government, not to induce them to fly from the tyranny of arbitrary power to the tyranny of no power at all. In short, resistance, the extreme form of which is revolution, is not so much the right as the solemn, unpleasant duty of a betrayed people. ”
Until we meet again, keep your booger hook off the bang switch until on target and ready to fire.
