Conservative Calls for Civil Disobedience

Thomas Jefferson, borrowing from John Locke, wrote in the Declaration of Independence that,

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.

It may turn out at some point that revolution is the only way to avoid despotism, but the costs of such a measure are so high and the outcome so uncertain that it should be an absolutely last resort. Long before such drastic steps become necessary citizens who wish to remain free, who wish our nation to be a nation of laws and not executive fiat, who wish to retain their rights to free speech, freedom of religion and freedom to bear arms, all of which are under unprecedented assault in this country by the current administration, should take to the streets in acts of civil disobedience and non-cooperation.

That our freedoms are in the Left's crosshairs becomes plainer, it seems, every day. What, for example could the president possibly have meant when he said that we need to change the way we report the news? What could Hillary Clinton have meant when she said that religious convictions that cause people to oppose abortion must be changed?

Here's the president a week or so ago:

And so, if we’re going to change how Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell think, we’re going to have to change how our body politic thinks, which means we’re going to have to change how the media reports on these issues, and how people’s impressions of what it’s like to struggle in this economy looks like.

How can he do that without essentially abrogating the freedom of the press? Here's Mrs. Clinton last month:

Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice — not just on paper....Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will and deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed. As I have said and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the 21st century and not just for women but for everyone — and not just in far away countries but right here in the United States.

How can she change the deep-seated ... religious beliefs of a people without abrogating our freedom of religion?

The progressive veils are being taken off. Their agenda of compelling people to accept their utopian vision and their understanding of a moral society is being explicitly stated. Charles Murray has written a book (By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission)in which, in the words of Clark Niely at The Federalist, calls for conservatives to resist the Left's relentless statism by engaging in selective civil disobedience. Niely writes:

Summarizing the thesis ... Charles Murray calls (read Murray's essay here)for citizens to push back against government over-regulation by refusing to comply with laws that are “pointless, stupid, or tyrannical” — especially when they interfere with our ability to earn a living, run a business, or use our own property....

Thus, the mere fact that a court says it is constitutional to bulldoze people’s homes in order to build nicer ones, or license the sale of floral arrangements, or exercise federal control of local pet-care decisions does not make it so. Those decisions are so obviously wrong—and so poorly reasoned—that they can make no serious claim to anyone’s intellectual or civic allegiance....

Simply put, when the government’s abuse of its authority is sufficiently clear, sufficiently oppressive, and sufficiently offensive to the conscience and morals of decent people, there is nothing un-conservative about resisting it, even (or perhaps especially) when the Supreme Court is out to lunch—as it so often is.

In his Letter From a Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King famously observed that unjust laws are no laws at all and should not be obeyed. The same can be said for Executive Orders and other unilateral means of unjustly imposing the will of one man on the entire nation while denying the people's representatives the ability to stop him.

Statists like those in the current administration will strip us of every freedom they can, they'll stick their noses into every aspect of our lives that they can, unless at some point, the citizenry declares that we've had enough. Murray thinks we're at that point now. If Mrs. Clinton wins in 2016 we'll surely be at that point then.

Even with a legislative branch controlled by Republicans, many of whom are also infected by the statist virus, the president can still appoint federal judges, Supreme Court Justices, and bureaucrats in the alphabet agencies like OSHA, EPA, IRS, etc. to circumvent any roadblocks the legislature may erect to ever-expanding government and ever-diminishing individual freedoms. It's past time for Americans to rouse themselves from their comfortable slumbers and begin to reclaim the freedom bequeathed us by the Founding Fathers.