The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, but it does contain principles that are somewhat definitional for the American ethos. There are two main principles from the Declaration that, when taken in tandem, amount to a countenancing and legitimization of revolutionary activity, even when that activity is beyond the law. The first principle is Jefferson’s definition of the purposes and legitimacy of government.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
No government is legitimate if it loses the consent of the governed. And the government’s purpose is to secure the life and liberty of the people so that they may be secure enough to pursue their happiness (however you want to define that). This definition of government determines that we have legal constitutional means for changing our leadership (periodic elections, plus the criminal courts and impeachment process). But those legal means may not always suffice. And the legitimate use of extralegal revolutionary action is spelled out in Jefferson’s second great principle.
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 one could rely on this second principle for legal protection if they chose to rise up against the government, but that doesn’t change that our government is founded on principles that legitimize extralegal activity in certain circumstances. It is this second principle that is gaining traction with the Glenn Becks of this world. If you really believe that President Obama’s decision to hire and fire the members of the board and CEO’s of major U.S. corporations is an act of Despotism, for example, it might make sense to take up arms against the government. You could have said the same about many of the Bush administration’s more controversial policies (like secretly abolishing the Fourth Amendment). One concern is more legitimately despotic than the other, but that doesn’t change the principle involved.
Unfortunately for Beck, his worldview is not shared by many Americans.
Consider this: Four out of five voters think politicians in Washington, D.C., should limit the pay of executives at companies that get federal bailout money. Three in 10 voters embrace the historically un-American notion that government should control the pay for executives of firms that don’t get any cash from Uncle Sam — the kind of trust in government over the private sector that only a few years ago would have seemed laughable. The sentiment may be unprecedented, but so too is the federal assistance to private industries to keep them in business.
Or, how about the finding that only one in seven thinks executives of companies that needed federal help were victims of adverse economic circumstances they could not have anticipated. Three-quarters of Americans think these business leaders were either incompetent or crooked.
Perhaps that is why almost half of Americans want federal prosecutors to be more aggressive in pursuing criminal charges against these business leaders, compared to one in 10 who wants them to be less aggressive.
Americans are furious with the corporate business community and they are willing to give their consent (defined as majority opinion) to the Federal Government for taking actions that Beck considers fascist and despotic. That’s doesn’t make the American people necessarily right. They did, after all, consent to most of the outrages of the Bush administration. But the fact that the American people are clamoring for more federal control over the corporate business community does undermine Beck’s case because Jefferson insisted that governments derive their legitimacy through the consent of the governed. So long as they have that consent, there is no legitimacy to extralegal revolutionary action.
This is something that the Civil Rights leaders understood. Civil disobedience isn’t revolutionary, even though it is often illegal. Martin Luther King Jr. asked us to live up to the true meaning of our Creed that all people are created equal (Jefferson’s first principle) not that we ‘abolish the forms’ of government to which we had become accustomed (his second principle).
It’s Glenn Beck’s right as a private citizen to try to convince us that we’re on a glidepath to despotism. I’m not sure it is FOX News right to air his vaguely seditionary propaganda.