When the rule of law becomes rule by law, disobedience is a duty.
Once upon a time, Americans understood instinctively that the government served at the consent of the governed. The Founders called it a “self-evident truth.” They risked their lives not for comfort or conformity, but for liberty grounded in Divine Law. Somewhere along the way, that moral clarity—and our nation—eroded.
Laws meant to restrain government overreach are now wielded as instruments of suppression.
Today, we live under a system that still bears the outward trappings of justice but has inverted its purpose. The Rule of Law—which once protected citizens from tyranny—has metastasized into Rule by Law, a perverse weaponization of the “People’s Law” through selective enforcement and intimidation. Laws meant to restrain government overreach are now wielded as instruments of suppression, silencing dissent and consolidating ideological control at the expense of Natural Rights.
We see it in courtrooms, classrooms, and boardrooms: a coordinated campaign to criminalize opposition and to punish those who dare to exercise their First Amendment rights. Under the deliberate politicization of selective justice, the gavel is mightier than the gun.
Witness the shocking revelations of the recently uncovered Arctic Frost conspiracy, that weaponized the DOJ against conservatives. Widespread and far-reaching, Arctic Frost gave bad actors the green light to wage lawfare on their critics.
They aim to bleed dissenters of time and money until they no longer have the means to resist.
The ongoing Smartmatic lawsuit against Mike Lindell, for example, is not about defamation; it’s about dominion over dissent. It is a declaration that the mere questioning the sanctity of their systems—whether elections, agencies, or narratives—is itself a punishable act. The goal is not justice, but defeating whistleblowers through legal attrition. They aim to bleed dissenters of time and money until they no longer have the means to resist.
This pattern has repeated itself across America, especially over the last 4-5 years. Parents who once trusted schools to educate their children are now treated as insurgents for showing up at schools and board meetings. Veterans, Trump allies and whistleblowers were raided at dawn, while violent criminals continue to be spit back onto our city streets by a revolving door of Marxist recruitment. Citizens who believe in constitutional limits are branded “extremists,” to this day. As detailed in Still in the Crosshairs, the same apparatus once used to crush January 6 protestors was applied to school parents peacefully holding their school districts accountable—and their persecution continues unabated.
The key principle of the Art of Defiance is simple: you have no moral obligation to obey an immoral order. Your obligation, in fact, is to a Higher Law from which statutes and legislation derive their authority.
This is not radical. It is the very foundation of Western liberty upon which the American Republic was built. From Cicero to Locke to Jefferson, every just system of law begins with a higher authority—“the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” When man’s decrees violate those laws, they lose legitimacy. Obedience, then, becomes complicity and defiance becomes duty.
Samuel Adams, the “Father of the American Revolution” didn’t mince words: “Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”
“If your price is not your life, then you are for sale.” -James O’Keefe
The Art of Defiance requires absolute commitment to our God-given Natural Rights. “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” asked Patrick Henry. “Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
James O’Keefe reflected this unconquerable spirit when he told our mutual friend Eric Metaxas on the Socrates in the City stage, “If your price is not your life, then you are for sale.”
He gets it.
Civil disobedience is not chaos or anarchy, but rather, a self-correction built into the genes of the Anglosphere legal foundation, from Runnymede’s Magna Carta to today’s Weaponization Working Group charter. “The People are the only legitimate source of power,” wrote James Madison, and we need to remember that.
“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents,” wrote Alexander Hamilton, “there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.”
When their pleas and petitions to the British government were ignored and trampled, the Founders became “ungovernable.” They pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor not to lawlessness, but to a higher order of justice. They knew Cicero’s words very well (most of them could read his words in the original Latin): “If the temporary masters of the state are unjust—that is, if they act contrary to the law of nature—men possessing right reason are under no moral obligation to obey them.”
“To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself.” -Thomas Jefferson
Across the nation, Americans are becoming more self-reliant, and less dependent on a bloated government so far off its constitutional rails that the Founders wouldn’t even recognize it today. Parents Demanding Justice Alliance has pulled together targeted parents across the nation. Entrepreneurs are building parallel economies. Whistleblowers are stepping out of the shadows. These acts of defiance—peaceful, moral, united—mean more than endless litigation. They are the direct expression of the will of the Republic.
When a judge hands down a politically charged ruling or a bureaucrat issues an unlawful decree, the question is no longer, “What can I get away with?” but “What will I stand up for?” The Art of Defiance demands that we answer tyranny with action: publicly refuse compliance with unjust orders; withdraw consent from illegitimate institutions; support those persecuted for speaking truth by whatever means necessary.
“A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen: but it is not the highest,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. “The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property…”
Obedience to unjust laws destroys justice itself.
Simply put, obedience to unjust laws destroys justice itself. Natural Law must reign supreme, and any verdict transgressing it is null and void. Our liberty is not granted by government, nor can it be waved away by the hand of a judge—it is an irrevocable gift from God.
Again, Samuel Adams gave direction for generations of free Americans to come:
It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or of any number of men, at the entering into society to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up an essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.
Freedom cannot be restored by permission slips.
Freedom cannot be restored by permission slips, but rather through righteous defiance and a stubborn refusal to allow the Rule of Law to be inverted into rule by law. When enough Americans stand firm in that truth, the machine of lawfare will grind to a halt. Even the powerful cannot govern the ungovernable.We simply cannot wait for Washington to fix what Washington broke. The remedy will come from the ground up as it did 250 years ago—from parents who refuse to be silenced, from entrepreneurs who refuse to bow to cancel culture, from churches that preach courage instead of comfort and conformity.
Far from being rebellion against our Republic, the Art of Defiance is a renaissance of her soul. It is how free men and women remind would-be rulers that consent is not coercion, and obedience is not owed to oppressors.
The battle lines are drawn not on party or policy, but on the oldest divide of all: freedom vs. tyranny.
“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history,” wrote Jefferson, “whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”
Postscript: It is the opinion of this writer that the Trump Administration should “deputize” leading citizens—parents, whistleblowers, grassroots leaders—to stand as the “People’s DOGE” and partner in dismantling lawfare. The reports of targeting and persecution are so numerous that the administration simply does not have the staff to bring justice in the next few years. The base that put this administration into office sees justice delayed as justice denied; formalizing their role fulfills the promise to return the power to the People, and it helps restore the covenant of trust between Washington and the voting base.
Kelly John Walker is an American statesman, senior writer, author, and entrepreneur. He is the Founder of FreedomTalk, Editor-in-Chief of FreedomTalk Magazine, and Co-Founder of Parents Demanding Justice Alliance. His work has appeared in The Washington Times, Gateway Pundit, The Epoch Times, Newsmax, Townhall, Law Enforcement Today, and more. He’s a frequent guest on national programs including Real America’s Voice, Bannon’s War Room, NTD Capitol Report, and more. Kelly holds degrees in English, Theology, and a Master of Science earned on a U.S. Department of Defense fellowship. In 2020, after being canceled and arrested for standing against government overreach, he became a leading independent journalist and advocate for liberty and parental rights.
