While this story is a rather comically exaggerated story about the January 6th kerfuffle last year, this struck me.

WaPo’s poll, taken between December 19 and December 19, asks US adults: ‘Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?’

 

Thirty-four percent of respondents said it could be, while 62 percent believe it’s never justified.

The response to that question should have been 100% that violence against government could be justified. Our nation was founded on violence against government. In fact, our nation was founded on the principle that it is a citizen’s duty to violently throw off government when that government no longer protects our rights. The Declaration of Independence lays out this principle as:

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, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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.

No, it should not be done lightly, but to say that it is NEVER justified is downright unAmerican. And the fact that this poll indicates that 62% of the people polled think that violence against government is never justified makes me weep for our future. Docile cows led to slaughter…