{"id":75825,"date":"2022-01-05T10:15:06","date_gmt":"2022-01-05T16:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=75825"},"modified":"2022-01-05T10:15:06","modified_gmt":"2022-01-05T16:15:06","slug":"75825","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=75825","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Of Course Violence against Government Can Be Justified<\/a><\/p>\n

The media have been making a big deal over a\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\/University of Maryland\u00a0poll<\/a> which finds that 34 percent of Americans believe violence can be justified against the government. It\u2019s a poll meant to feed the hysteria over the Capitol Hill riot and embarrass Republicans into supporting \u201cvoting rights\u201d bills and so on.<\/p>\n

Despite the framing of most reaction stories, the question wasn\u2019t about January 6. It was: \u201cDo you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ever<\/em>? Of course it is. It\u2019s a failure of our civic education that 100 percent of respondents didn\u2019t answer yes. The ability to resist a tyrannical government is a foundational American idea. It was the justification for the founding revolution. It, not hunting or skeet shooting, is the core reason for existence of the Second Amendment \u2014 which, Joseph Story, an associate Supreme Court justice, said best, \u201coffers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Incidentally, the participants were asked to provide instances when violence against the state would be justified, and all of them are perfectly reasonable:<\/p>\n

Government violates or takes away rights or freedoms\/Oppresses people \u2013 22 percent<\/span><\/p>\n

Government no longer a democracy\/ Becomes a dictatorship\/Coup\/ Military takes over \u2013 15 percent<\/span><\/p>\n

Government violates constitution \u2014 13 percent<\/span><\/p>\n

Government abuses power\/Tyranny \u2014 12 percent<\/span><\/p>\n

Government is violent against citizens\/Safety at risk \u2013 11 percent<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Contemporary liberals often view this form of rhetoric as an endorsement of treason because they view our rights as an arbitrary and malleable cluster of edicts handed down by the government. What sneering contemporary critics fail to comprehend is that the founding generation believed that those who would undermine the universal and inalienable liberties of the people laid out in the Constitution were traitors.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, I don\u2019t believe there was any justification for the rioting on January 6. But if the\u00a0Post<\/em>\u00a0was interested in extracting even marginally useful information, it would have asked if people thought there was a justification for January 6 violence, rather than a separate question about the veracity of the 2020 election followed by a broad question on violent resistance. Though a specific question almost certainly wouldn\u2019t have brought back the intended result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of Course Violence against Government Can Be Justified The media have been making a big deal over a\u00a0Washington Post\/University of Maryland\u00a0poll which finds that 34 percent of Americans believe violence can be justified against the government. It\u2019s a poll meant to feed the hysteria over the Capitol Hill riot and embarrass Republicans into supporting \u201cvoting … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,24,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goobermint","category-rights","category-rkba","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75826,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75825\/revisions\/75826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}