When is it time to rebel against a corrupt tyrannical government?
(now.)
It is manifestly obvious that our own legal system is being used as a weapon against the People of the United States; a two-tiered “injustice system” is engaged in egregious abuse of power. Blatant political persecution—arresting and jailing the opposition—previously unthinkable in our Republic warrants an immediate, decisive response if our nation is to survive.
As Dinesh D’Souza launches his new documentary, Police State—as we witness the unspeakable armed invasion of family residences, and the imprisonment of citizens in gulags while the real criminals walk free—We the People MUST stop this cancerous tyranny before it grows even more powerful.
It is past time we decisively crush the Police State.
But do we fight tyranny by way of peaceful civil disobedience, or must we continue to submit to unjust, corrupt authority under the assumption that they are the arbiters of the Rule of Law?
The answer to these questions is not hard to find; we can draw on the Architects of our Freedom for sure and certain guidance.
The Law of the Land was made for the People, to protect us; we were not made to be subjects under it.
We don’t have to guess how and when to respond; we can know. We have precedent—from Cicero to Thomas Jefferson—to guide us as to the appropriate response to our government when it becomes abusive. We do not just have a right to stand against infringements of our liberty, we have a duty.
As Samuel Adams asserted: “The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks,” he said. “We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”
The Law of the Land was made for the People, to protect us; we were not made to be subjects under it. Yet, the Founding Fathers understood a truth repeated throughout humanity’s history: Tyrants will use the law itself to bludgeon people into submission; it is their nature to do so.
“Law is often but the tyrant’s will,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1819. “And always so when it violates the right of an individual.”
Common Law is the Default “Rule of Law” by Social Contract
Our Founding Fathers understood that under normal circumstances, the Rule of Law is necessary, but they also understood that the law and the legal system would be used by tyrants as weapons against individual rights.
But what can the people do when judges and governing authorities fail to perform “the most sacred of duties of a government,” which Jefferson said “is to do equal an impartial justice to all its citizens”? The Founders drew from the rich philosophical and legal foundations of western history in answering this crucial question. Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and their contemporaries were keen masters of political science; they were realists who anticipated the inevitability of human nature to lust for power. So, they made “in case of emergency, break glass” provisions whereby individuals could defy—yes—even laws that violate the Social Contract between people and government.
Thomas Jefferson put the answer in succinct prose: “A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen,” he wrote. “But it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.”
The Rule of Law is a term spoken with a certain hushed reverence as to something sacred, fixed, and immutable. Nevertheless, its delegated authority is contingent on the government’s fidelity to another Law. Clearly the authors of the Declaration of Independence recognized there are reasons for citizens to defy legislated laws, appealing to this “higher obligation.”
American author, mathematician, and political commentator (and friend) Dr. James Lindsay told Jan Jakielek in an August 19 Epoch Times article that undermining the public’s faith in the Rule of Law is the goal of the Left.
True enough.
But then Lindsey sets up a rigid dichotomy: You either submit to the Rule of Law or you rebel against it, thereby giving the Left cause to arrest, indict, and imprison you.
“The swift and varied legal actions taken against former President Donald Trump as he navigates his campaign for 2024 reelection” is in part to “provoke the American public into giving up the rule of law,” he says.
“That vertical target is to undermine the rule of law,” he asserts, “undermine Americans’ belief in the rule of law, undermine some freedom that allows them to step in and take control.”
As Lindsey sees it, the goal is to have people believe “the rule of law is off the table,” and take matters into their own hands, after which their actions will be used against them, “just like they did on January 6.”
I respectfully assert a third option.
The Highest Law: The Standard in Time of Crisis
Simply put, in time of crisis we can and must appeal to the Highest Rule of Law, variously known as “Divine Law,” “God-given Law,” “Natural Rights,” and “The Law of Nature and Nature’s God,” as the Declaration of Independence called it.
Our country is in danger—not our “democracy,” which is the rule of the mob over the individual—but, rather our Republic founded upon protecting the rights of the individual. Because tyrants are depriving people, like many of the J6 defendants, of due process and imposing politically motivated cruel and unusual punishment, the “laws of necessity” and “of self-preservation” oblige us to respond to these outrages with a firm resolve to cling to Divine Rule of Law.
Continuing his quote above, Jefferson wrote, “To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.”
Clearly, we are in such a time where the Common Law is routinely warped into a weapon and wielded against the American People, assaulting the sacred rights our Creator has endowed to us, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” This must be stopped. Now.
The government crosses a sacred line when it degenerates from the Rule of Law to Rule by law.
This was the situation at Runnymede, England in 1215 when an alliance of fed-up barons and clergymen seized control of London and forced King John to sign the document later monikered the Magna Carta. Magna Carta was special because it held the king accountable to the Rule of Law, just like everyone else. The most famous and important of 63 clauses in the charter enshrined the rights of “free men” to justice and a fair trial.
This was also the situation just prior to July 4, 1776. While many people seem to think of the Revolutionary War as a “tax rebellion,” it was in fact a second English civil war, whereby the people of the American colonies recognized that Common Law was being routinely weaponized against them when not utterly ignored.
The Declaration condemned the Crown “For abolishing the free System of English Laws…establishing therein an Arbitrary government…abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments,” including “suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.” Furthermore, the Crown they said, “obstructed the Administration of Justice.”
Rule by Law Must Not be Tolerated
The government crosses a sacred line when it degenerates from the Rule of Law to Rule by law. Today we speak of lawfare: using the law as a weapon against the people, instead of to protect them. We have seen this in the “pretended legislation” of mandates, a two-tiered justice system, and use of the courts for political persecution. It is expressed today through the weaponization of the “administrative state,” an army of overbearing bureaucrats. “He has erected a multitude of New Offices,” reads the Declaration, “and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”
It sounds all too familiar.
When power-hungry officers and administrators of the law abuse it, their version of the law ceases to be obligatory.
The appropriate response at this stage might be called civil disobedience—open defiance predicated on loyalty to the Highest Law. Yet, I prefer to think of it as obedience to the Higher Law and consider that the members of the unholy alliance of unelected bureaucrats and power-hungry politicians are the ones guilty of disobedience against the ultimate Rule of Law. They routinely break the social contract and as such, their pretended authority is illegitimate.
Acknowledging their breaches of contract does not constitute abandoning the Rule of Law, but rather, adhering to the Source by which it is judged. At this stage, the government has betrayed the Rule of Law’s major charge to restrain government and protect the People, just as King John learned 808 years ago when confronted by those to whom the Law of the Land belonged.
In obedience to the Rule of Law that protects our Liberty, we must defy Rule by law in massive numbers—and that may include refusing to pay unjust fines or go to jail under politically motivated sentencing. Local communities should surround those unjustly persecuted and convicted and refuse to stand down in protecting them.
Does this mean that we are abandoning the Rule of Law? By no means! We are upholding it!
Am I promoting anarchy? Absolutely not; I am promoting Law of a higher order. Lawfare, which is rule by arbitrary power, itself leads to chaos and anarchy.
John Adams asked, “Will the spirits of the people as yet unsubdued by tyranny, unawed by the menace of arbitrary power, submit to be governed by military force?” His answer was emphatic and clear: “No.”
“It is the will of the nation which makes the law obligatory;” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1799. Likewise, “It is their will which vacates or annihilates the organ which is to declare and announce it.”
Simply put, when power-hungry officers and administrators of the law abuse it, their version of the law ceases to be obligatory.
Most people have been so conditioned to a slavish devotion to “Rule of Law” that they lack the will to break the chains of lawfare designed to strip them of their fundamental rights. We must find the will to be defiant against tyranny as one man in particular practiced like an art form.
Samuel Adams had the will to be defiant.
Known as the “Father of the American Revolution” Adams was—in the eyes of the authorities—a real “pain in the ass.” His uncompromising passion for Liberty and Justice made him unbreakable. His commitment to Natural Law led him to defy Boston Governor Gage’s attempts both to bribe and to prosecute him. He refused to submit to unjust authority, nor see the inside of a prison or the penalties of supposed treason. Without the courage of “the Father of the American Revolution,” we very likely would not have the country wherein we currently strive to regain the freedom men like Adams fought and died to forge into history’s greatest Republic.
We should introduce bills in states where freedom maintains a foothold to declare themselves “sanctuary states” against domestic political persecution.
Boston’s General Gage received peremptory orders from the British government to arrest Samuel Adams and “his willing and ready tool,” John Hancock. They were to be sent to London to be tried for high treason. A London newspaper predicted that their heads would soon be separated from their bodies. The “authorities” intended to seize Adams and Hancock at Lexington on the morning of April 19. However, Paul Revere tipped them off, and they escaped, making their way to Philadelphia in time for the second session of the Continental Congress.
Put simply, these men refused to comply to a perverted parody of the Rule of Law, refused to submit to rule by law.
Like our Forefathers, we cannot allow a warped and broken mockery of the People’s Law to abide in our midst. Without violence if at all possible, we must, fellow citizens, practice the Art of Defiance. Individually, we must adhere to the self-evident Natural Laws, yet stand together against the present tyranny.
In these times, we should ask the states where freedom maintains a foothold to declare themselves “sanctuary states” against domestic political persecution. America has long been a place where foreign citizens can apply for political asylum, and this option should be available for U.S. citizens in this unprecedented time when clearly a police state has so weaponized itself against those they rule through intimidation and brute force that the U.S. House of Representatives has an active Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The states themselves can judge the validity of applications for asylum.
The police state is not a conspiracy theory, it is an acknowledged entity that daily transgresses the Rule of Law designed to protect the People from just such tyranny.
Standing up to them in righteous defiance is the only way. It will require uncommon courage and devotion to our founding principles. It will call us to live those words rarely heard these days, “who more than self, their country loved…”
In part three of the Art of Defiance series, I will detail how I am forging a new path out of this mess toward a rebirth of Freedom. To be honest, the audacity of it terrifies me at times, but as anti-Nazi dissident, young Sophie Scholl, wrote shortly before her execution, “An end in terror is preferable to terror without end.”
Kelly John Walker is an American statesman, senior writer, and entrepreneur. He is Founder of FreedomTalk, Host of FreedomTalkTV, and a freelance writer published in The Washington Times, Gateway Pundit, The Epoch Times, George Magazine, Andrew Magazine, Newsmax, Townhall, and more. Kelly holds a BA in English & Theology, and a Master of Science degree on a graduate fellowship with the US Department of Defense. He had a distinguished career as a conservation professional before founding two award-winning advertising agencies.
His newest project is the “Fathering in a World Gone Mad” series featuring Eric Metaxas, Victor Marx, Sheriff Mark Lamb, Clay Clark, and more.
