An Insurrection by Any Other Name
In the battle between procedure versus principle, principle always wins
In 1689, John Locke defined the reason people form governments:
“The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society…”
The idea that any government should be both protective of, and responsible to, the citizens that inhabit it was a revolutionary idea during Locke’s time. While the Magna Carta had been around for some 400 years, it was not about a government of citizens that was responsible to the citizens – the Magna Carta was about restricting the power of a monarch.
Attributed to Thomas Jefferson is the assertion that “a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have”. There is no evidence that Jefferson said it, but that does not make it any less true.
When people cede their power to a government, the collection and concentration of power is substantial. The question then becomes not what can or cannot be done, rather what should or should not be done, and the latter is a much more difficult question to answer. The former is merely a question of procedure, the latter is a question of principle.
People with power find it easy to hide behind procedure. “I was just doing my job” and “I was just following orders” are procedural excuses that have been used throughout history to absolve people of responsibility for failures and bad acts. Procedure divorces the person from the product, it removes the responsibility of outcome from the person performing the act and places it on the person or entity who created the procedure. That is not possible for a question of principle – principles are individual and cut to the core of the person, it is rooted in their soul. There is no escape from bad decision or outcome based on principle. You broke it, you bought it.
No constitution or written law can stop people who lack principle from using procedure to do the most damaging things to a population. That is what John Adams meant when he wrote:
“Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”
People tend to focus on the phrase “moral and religious people” and skip right over the first sentence, which is the most important part of the quote. Given our current state of affairs, if one replaces “Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry” with “will to power”, it captures our current times with a certain degree of clarity.
At every turn, we are being shown members of our “legislative” have few characteristics indicating they can be trusted not to be the whale that rips our Constitution apart. Locke proposes when a legislative achieves that state, the people have no duty to remain obedient:
“…for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence.”
I know the POTL consider any opposition or expression of disappointment toward government as an “insurrection”, but that is simply not true. Jefferson incorporated Locke’s idea that a people have the ultimate say in whether the government of which they voluntarily consented to create has lost its way and become tyrannical. Nearly a century before Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, Locke wrote:
“Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.”
Tyrants come in all flavors, colors, and sizes. It is not a requirement they be a despotic violent dictator; they are more often chosen or elected as representatives of the people. When power is concentrated, it draws tyrants to it in the same manner as does the flame call to the moth.
But principles do trump procedure.
History proves the first duty of a tyrant is to protect their own power and position, and they most often do this via procedural means – by passing laws, regulations or simply interpreting the motives of the citizenry in the worst possible terms – therefore why the Democrats screamed “Insurrection!” on January 6th as they largely ignored 2020, a full year of riots and attacks on government facilities.
Any objective review of the past year reveals how the POTLs used the procedure/principle dichotomy to their advantage. The Democrats claimed the riots, looting and attacks on federal buildings were driven by principle, therefore understandable and even allowable - but by claiming 1/6 was an insurrection, they could make it an issue of law rather than principle and therefore completely incomprehensible and illegal. They are doing anything to avoid the discussion of how principles were violated, serving to bring America to the boiling point.
Americans have a duty and “a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security”. That does not necessarily mean it will be done through violence or “insurrection” but it does mean we have a duty and a right to change direction.
Americans should never allow that right to be taken from them.