The Founding Fathers certainly believed that Americans had an inherent right to overthrow a government – by force of arms, if necessary – which acted against their interests and stripped them of their rights. It’s in the Declaration of Independence, a document every bit as important as the United States Constitution.
The Declaration of Independence proclaims “Life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” to be the unalienable rights of all people (all men, specifically, as the document says but it’s 2019, so let’s go with “people” because that was implied). This – the first of all founding documents – is very clear about the course of action to be taken, should the government deny those rights to the people:
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government …”
There you go. It’s right there. As if to emphasize the point, it is made again later in the same paragraph:
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Where’s the Beef?
Pretty clear. No bones about it. Government got you down? Suppressing your rights? Reducing you under absolute “Despotism”? The Founders gave you the legal authority to “alter or to abolish” that government; to throw it off. It is, after all, how America was founded.
So the question is: Why are Democrats not revolting? Now, clearly, they are revolting – but why are they not actually revolting? According to them, all the criteria are there. Democrat politicians, their pet journos, left-wing pundits and activists; all have been claiming, for the past two and half years that President Donald Trump’s administration is tyrannical, despotic, and evil. The president’s enemies have claimed – or at least acted as though – the rights of women, non-whites, non-Christians, and members of the LGBT community have already been stripped away. So, what’s the hold-up?
Do the Trump-haters need a little more encouragement? A little more affirmation that the great men who ushered this nation into being would approve? To wit, I give you the words of Thomas Jefferson. In a 1787 letter to William Stephens, Jefferson wrote: “[&] what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?”
Jefferson had a very good point, which is precisely why governments are always eager to disarm civilian populations. He went on to write: “what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s [sic] natural manure.”
Make no mistake: Jefferson was not speaking metaphorically. The tree of liberty – the “Liberty Tree” – was an actual tree, leaves and all. It was an American Elm and it stood on Boston Common. Americans would often gather beneath it to grumble about the British until they realized that grumbling wasn’t doing them any good and it was about time to put some ammunition down-range to make sure the message was getting through.
So, where are the Democrats? Why are they not doing the same? If they truly believed their own rhetoric – that the nation is under the thumb of a maniac, a Nazi, a dictator – why have they not taken to the streets with guns in order to save the country from tyranny?
Hollywood B-lister Jeff Daniels – also known as Jeff Who? – recently claimed, on MSNBC, that Trump’s re-election in 2020 would be “the end of democracy.” He also compared Trump supporters to the KKK. Freshman (freshperson?) representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), responding to Alabama’s new abortion ban and pushing her “Green New Deal,” said on social media, recently, that the GOP wants “to burn fossil fuels till there’s hell on Earth.” Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono (D), speaking on CNN about the escalating tensions with Iran, accused the president of “once again thumping his chest acting like he is the dictator that I think he wants to be.”
Jeff Daniels
A dictator, supported by a 60-something-million-strong KKK? Hell on Earth? The end of democracy? Why would any true patriot not be attempting the armed overthrow of the administration, if such things were true? Where are you, Jeff? You’re not in the streets; you’re acting in a Broadway play. What are you going to do? Act Trump to death? Well, maybe. Lord knows you’ve acted the rest of us to death.
What about you, Alexandria? Are you all mouth and no action? Don’t you want to fight to prevent the Republicans from literally turning the Earth into Hell?
And Mazie, what are you doing? How much are you willing to personally sacrifice to stop this dictator? Demanding his tax returns? Oh, well, that’s fine, then. If only the lawmakers of the Weimar Republic had demanded Adolf Hitler’s tax returns, there would have been no World War II and no Holocaust.
Like a Venezuelan Butcher’s Shop, There is No Beef
There are a couple of explanations of why these leftists are not taking the extreme course of action that such a situation would call for. The first possibility is that they don’t believe a word of what they are saying. It’s all bluster and hyperbole. After all, if Trump were genuinely a tyrant, then the very people who publicly berate, insult, and demonize him would already be rotting in prison. In part, these leftists are still throwing a tantrum because the last presidential election didn’t go their way and, in part, they have some very serious concerns for the future of their own political ideology.
The second possibility – less likely but, who knows? – is that they really are all so delusional that, to them, the president is really that evil but they know very well that, if it came to a shooting war, they would lose – and lose badly. It would be the end of the Democratic Party and the end of progressivism. More importantly, for people like AOC and Hirono, it would be the end of their own political ambitions. The gravy train, for them, would go off the rails, permanently.
Instead, they are fighting a cold civil war. This war is being fought in congressional hearings and in the courts. It is being fought in the legacy media and on social media platforms. The left simply does not have the stomach for physical action, with the exception of the few, such as the lunatic who attempted to murder GOP congressmen and the whiney brats of Antifa. Also, the left doesn’t want chaos and destruction because they want supreme power and it’s just not the same to have power over burning cities and piles of corpses – even if they were to prevail. They would rather keep everything intact and bully their way to power.
It is long past time that the left was called out for its hyperbole, though. The demand that they put up or shut up is long overdue. What kind of people take no action in the shadow of approaching tyranny, death, and hell on Earth? The Founding Fathers, clearly, would not have approved of the left’s extremism but, were they alive today and believed the left’s accusations to be true, they would be asking one question of Trump’s detractors: What in the wide world of sports are you fools waiting for?
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