Second Amendment Remedies

Sharron Angle, R-NV, has said that if this election, or possibly also the 2012 election, don't give the Tea Partiers what they want, they may have to resort to "Second Amendment remedies." Stephen Broden, R-TX, says that "We have a constitutional remedy. And the Framers say if that doesn't work, revolution." He later clarified that he thought violent revolution should not be taken off the table. Though I have an opinion about the matter, I'm not going to discuss the Markos Moulitsas-inspired debate about whether it's fair to call these people the "American Taliban" in this post. Instead I am going to describe what I see as the constitutional and philosophical underpinnings, or lack thereof, of their revolutionary logic.

First, Constitutional. There is no right of rebellion under the United States Constitution. There can never be a right to rebellion against a government guaranteed in that government's Constitution. It's an absurd idea, right? If you are mounting a violent insurrection, do you really care whether the fundamental laws of the government you are actively trying to overthrow sanction your actions? If so, you have issues. Yes, the Constitution says that "a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." That says, at its broadest, that you may have guns. It does not say that you may use guns to destroy the government the Constitution created. So, teabaggers, let's get one thing straight, right off the bat: the minute you mount a violent insurrection against the United States Government, stop talking about the U.S. Constitution, and stop talking about how patriotic you are and how much you love this country. If you're trying to overthrow it, you are neither acting pursuant to its laws nor acting out of love for it. And I'd like an apology, of course, for every right-winger who ever accused any left-winger of treason for criticizing, though not threatening to overthrow, the Bush Administration.

Did the Founders say you had a right to rebellion if you didn't get your way under the "Constitutional remedy"? Well, Thomas Jefferson did talk about how "a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing..." All of the quotes from Jefferson on the subject of rebellion, though, are from circa 1787, prior to the adoption of the US Constitution. The country was barely even a country, and its governing system was plainly inadequate to the task of governing it (the Articles of Confederation, which I'd note were a states' rights activist's dream). The US government was designed, in the Constitution, with the intent of creating a lasting structure, one that would stand, hopefully, in perpetuity. Maybe Jefferson at one time spouted stuff about rebellion; that's one guy, who didn't even attend the Constitutional Convention, and truth be told was an anti-Federalist, and later decided that, hey, our system works pretty well, and under this system you can have revolutions without bloodshed! Hooray!

And that brings me to my last and most fundamental point. On March 4th, 1801, something happened that had never before happened in the history of the world. To my mind, this is the date America started demonstrating that we were really onto something good here. On that day, for the first time in history, one group of rulers passed power to another group of rulers voluntarily, without the use of force (which they had at their command). The new ruler, of course, was Thomas Jefferson. At the time, people remarked about how wonderful this peaceful revolution was. Of course, by now it's no surprise when one party relinquishes power voluntarily after losing an election, but it hadn't happened before the Revolution of 1800.

So all of Jefferson's quotes from 1787 are irrelevant to my primary point of political philosophy. There is and can be no right to violent rebellion in a functional democracy. This, at least, follows from a basic democratic theory, so if you accept that democracy is basically good, in some form or another, then I'm right about this. In a functional democracy, you have a means to change your government. The whole point of democracy is that peaceful rebellions happen every seven, five, four, two years, maybe every single year! The rulers are automatically kept in check by the constant threat of non-violent, constitutionally-sanctioned opposition that just might manage to overthrow the Government, in the sense they use it in Britain, without overthrowing the actual government. Violent rebellion, being violent, needs a pretty major justification. Political oppression by an illegitimate, undemocratic government counts, at least in some circumstances. If you have an alternative remedy, though, you use it instead.

And no, there is absolutely no right to rebel if you lose at democracy. If you lose an election, guess what? You lost. More people wanted to vote for the other guys. This is where the part about "if you like democracies in the first place" comes in. Because, think of it this way: suppose in a country you have an election, and Party A gets 55% and Party B gets 45%. Party B gets unhappy. They rebel. They take down the government. Hooray! They are no longer being oppressed by those damned "tyrants of the majority." Now what? They now have to set up a government. If they set up a democracy, unless they have persuaded more than 5% of the population to be on their side now, they will lose again. If they set up a government that they get to run, it is not a democracy! And setting up no government, well, that just doesn't work, no matter what Ayn Rand might have wanted.

So, tea partiers. When you talk about rebelling against the United States government: a) you demonstrate a contempt for the Constitution; b) you display hypocrisy vis-a-vis the numerous criticisms of liberals for criticizing Bush for eight years, c) you do not actually have the right to do that, as a matter of political theory, and d) you betray a contempt for democracy. As soon as you say "Second Amendment remedies," or "revolution," you ought by rights to lose all respect in the political forum.

(And for what it's worth, yeah, I think the American Taliban label is fair game. Google "Raul Grijalva white powder" and see what you find.)