Civil Disobedience is Our Duty

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist

because men have made laws.”

Frederick Bastiat

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James Madison, the fourth president, known as “The Father of Our Constitution” made the following statement:

“We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

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Alfred Adask The individual Rights guaranteed by our Constitution can be compromised or ignored by our government. For example, in United States v. Johnson, 76 F. Supp. 538, 539 (D. Pa. 1947), Federal District Court Judge James Alger Fee ruled that,

“The privilege against self-incrimination is neither accorded to the passive resistant, nor to the person who is ignorant of his rights, nor to one indifferent thereto. It is a FIGHTING clause. It’s benefits can be retained only by sustained COMBAT. It cannot be claimed by attorney or solicitor. It is valid only when insisted upon by a BELLIGERENT claimant in person.” McAlister vs. Henkel, 201 U.S. 90, 26 S.Ct. 385, 50 L.Ed. 671; Commonwealth vs. Shaw, 4 Cush. 594, 50 Am.Dec. 813; Orum vs. State, 38 Ohio App. 171, 175 N.E. 876. The one who is persuaded by honeyed words or moral suasion to testify or produce documents rather than make a last ditch stand, simply loses the protection. . . . He must refuse to answer or produce, and test the matter in contempt proceedings, or by habeas corpus.” [Emphasis added.]

Notice the verdict’s confrontational language: “fighting”, “combat”, and most surprising, “belligerent”. Did you ever expect to ever read a Federal Court condemn citizens for being “passive” or “ignorant”? Did you ever expect to see a verdict that encouraged citizens to be “belligerent” IN COURT…?

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Better go back and re-read that extraordinary verdict. And read it again. And commit it to memory, for it succinctly describes the essence of the American legal system.

Clearly, we must do SOMETHING, for as Sir Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.“ Read more.

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Sheriff Mack Wins in the Supreme Court!

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The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boetie

No Treason by Lysander Spooner

Marc Stevens’s

Adventures in Legal Land

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“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only with a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

Winston Churchill

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Frederick Douglass said, “Find out just what the people will submit to and you’ve found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

[1849, original title: Resistance to Civil Government]

I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best
which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up
to more rapidly and systematically.

Carried out, it finally
amounts to this, which also I believe–”That government is
best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared
for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments
are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

The objections which have been brought against a standing army,
and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail,
may also at last be brought against a standing government.
The standing army is only an arm of the standing government.
The government itself, which is only the mode which the people
have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused
and perverted before the people can act through it.