# Think Tank > U.S. Constitution >  "Suppress insurrections" vs a usurpacious government.

## unknown

Not sure if "usurpacious" is a word.

So the Founders gave the government the authority to suppress "insurrections".

But dont the people have a right to protest or reform their government?

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## euphemia

The people have the right to peaceful assembly to redress grievances against Congress.

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## unknown

> The people have the right to peaceful assembly to redress grievances against Congress.


Hmmm.

Not too many responses on this one.

I'll be moving on now.  

Have a good one!

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## Pericles

One of the things the militia system would do is see where most of the people were in regard to whether events were an insurrection or a forced reform of government. Neither Shay's "rebellion" or the whiskey "rebellion" prompted calls for disarmament to the extent it has happened today.

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## unknown

> The people have the right to peaceful assembly to redress grievances against Congress.


But I thought that the FFs had a mistrust of government and wanted to preserve the right to bear arms as a way to counter government tyranny?

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## Ender

> But I thought that the FFs had a mistrust of government and wanted to preserve the right to bear arms as a way to counter government tyranny?


That's exactly what the 2nd Amendment is about- can't have _that_ now, can we?

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## Sonny Tufts

> That's exactly what the 2nd Amendment is about- can't have _that_ now, can we?


Seems to me there's an irreconcilable conflict between that justification for the 2nd Amendment and the fact that treason (which includes making war against the United States) is punishable.  The Framers apparently wanted to permit the people to have the means to revolt while at the same time reserving to the government the authority to punish them in the event they were unsuccessful.

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## Ben Franklin

> Not sure if "usurpacious" is a word.
> 
> So the Founders gave the government the authority to suppress "insurrections".
> 
> But dont the people have a right to protest or reform their government?


The Founders provided the answer to the question raised here in the Declaration of Independence, which offers the most-elegant-in-history statement of the conditions that justify and _require_ exercise of the _primary_, fundamental natural right of self-defense against a tyrant. In my view, the election of Donald Trump is the electorate's exasperated expression of grievances against a usurpacious political class of self-appointed overlords who have increasingly contravened the Constitution and undermined republicanism using totalitarian tactics of social influence, namely, demagoguery, identity politics, association bias, character assassinations and false victimhood based upon race, gender and economic standing.  If the political class succeeds in annulling the results of an election by disabling/deposing the president using such tactics, I fear we are reaching the foothills of tyranny described in the Declaration of Independence. Ignominious, anti-American ignoramus Dianne Feinstein has been a leading figure in the seditious efforts to take down the president, and she just introduced a bill banning manufacture and sale of so-called "military style assault weapons," which includes unremarkable, small caliber, semi-automatic rifles that have insufficient power to use for deer hunting.  The pattern of encroaching fascism is unmistakable.  Feinstein and her seditious, usurpacious cronies treat our republican institutions like luxurious rail cars they can ride to oligarchy and then get off.  They think we are too stupid to make wise choices about our lives and government, too stupid to know and handle the truth, and indeed, too stupid to be free.

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## Stratovarious

I came here for; 'usurpacious' I like it.

''...put down a domestic rebellion/insurrection...''...that has always troubled me, 
not sure how to tackle that one.

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## Superfluous Man

> Not sure if "usurpacious" is a word.
> 
> So the Founders gave the government the authority to suppress "insurrections".
> 
> But dont the people have a right to protest or reform their government?


I think you are mixing up the values of the Declaration of Independence with those of the US Constitution.

The two documents have two diametrically opposed value systems.

To hold to the values of the DOI, which denies that any governments have the moral license to exercise powers without the consent of the governed, is to repudiate the Constitution, which enumerates for the federal government a list of powers that it is to exercise over people without their consent.

Each of us must choose which side we are on, the DOI, or the Constitution. As for me, I think the DOI got it right.

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## Superfluous Man

> But I thought that the FFs had a mistrust of government and wanted to preserve the right to bear arms as a way to counter government tyranny?


It is a fallacy to sweep all of the people who get labelled "founding fathers" together like that.

The whole point of adopting the US Constitution, for those who favored doing so, was born in the conviction that the national government such as it then existed under the Articles of Confederation had too little power. They wanted a federal government (i.e. themselves) that was modeled more after what the regime ruling the British Empire (i.e. the Empire this nation had recently fought a war to leave) had. And they got it.

But many so-called "founding fathers" opposed them in that pursuit. It just so happens that the pro-big government side won that dispute, and the distrustful of government side lost it.

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## Sonny Tufts

> I think you are mixing up the values of the Declaration of Independence with those of the US Constitution.
> 
> The two documents have two diametrically opposed value systems.
> 
> To hold to the values of the DOI, which denies that any governments have the moral license to exercise powers without the consent of the governed, is to repudiate the Constitution, which enumerates for the federal government a list of powers that it is to exercise over people without their consent.
> 
> Each of us must choose which side we are on, the DOI, or the Constitution. As for me, I think the DOI got it right.


But the DOI wasn't declaring a state of anarchy in which each individual had to consent before the law applied to him.  To the contrary, it declared that the colonies were free and independent States with the power to do all things such States can do.  The consent it referred to wasn't the consent of each individual but rather a collective consent.  And how the powers given to Congress under the Constitution were to be exercised was to be determined through a representative system in which the consent of the people is given indirectly.  And since this was the same system that was used in each of the States, I don't see any conflict between the DOI and the Constitution.

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## Superfluous Man

> But the DOI wasn't declaring a state of anarchy in which each individual had to consent before the law applied to him.  To the contrary, it declared that the colonies were free and independent States with the power to do all things such States can do.  The consent it referred to wasn't the consent of each individual but rather a collective consent.  And how the powers given to Congress under the Constitution were to be exercised was to be determined through a representative system in which the consent of the people is given indirectly.  And since this was the same system that was used in each of the States, I don't see any conflict between the DOI and the Constitution.


There is no collective except collectives made up of individuals.

"All of the things such [free and independent] states can do," at least all that they can do with the Creator's moral license, if what the DOI says is true, includes zero powers that they may exercise without the consent of the governed. The DOI, incidentally, makes no mention of inalienable rights of states, but only those of men. 

A representative system does not give the elected government the consent of the people, not even indirectly. At most it gives it the consent of some of the people. But even that is dubious, since an elected representative can (and generally does) vote to give the government powers that even the people who voted for him don't want it to have, to say nothing of all those who didn't vote for him (which is usually the great majority). And even when a representative truly votes in accordance with the consent of his constituents, he and those who vote along with him may be defeated by other representatives who vote the opposite way, thus imposing not only on their own constituents, but also on the former representative's constituents, laws to which that representative's constituents do not consent, either individually or collectively.

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## Sonny Tufts

> There is no collective except collectives made up of individuals.


Agreed.  But what kind of consent do you think the DOI was referring to?  The unanimous consent of all individuals?  The consent of a majority?  The consent of a majority of elected representatives?




> And even when a representative truly votes in accordance with the consent of his constituents, he and those who vote along with him may be defeated by other representatives who vote the opposite way, thus imposing not only on their own constituents, but also on the former representative's constituents, laws to which that representative's constituents do not consent, either individually or collectively.


True, but that's the risk in any representative form of government, including those adopted by the States and their citizens.  Any objection to the powers given to Congress in the Constitution can also be made to the powers given State governments in their respective constitutions and to the powers given to city governments in their respective charters or (if you want to go farther down) to neighborhood associations in their respective governing documents.

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## Superfluous Man

> Agreed.  But what kind of consent do you think the DOI was referring to?  The unanimous consent of all individuals?  The consent of a majority?  The consent of a majority of elected representatives?


I honestly don't think its signatories had worked through the implications of that dogma in their own minds. Ultimately, consent must boil down to each individual consenting to delegate to the government such powers as that individual wishes to delegate, such as occurs all the time in agreements individuals make with one another in the marketplace. To stop short of that is to contradict the claim that powers must be derived from the consent of the governed in order to be just.




> True, but that's the risk in any representative form of government, including those adopted by the States and their citizens. Any objection to the powers given to Congress in the Constitution can also be made to the powers given State governments in their respective constitutions and to the powers given to city governments in their respective charters or (if you want to go farther down) to neighborhood associations in their respective governing documents.


Absolutely, the natural conclusion toward which the DOI impels its own signatories is to accept that, according to the very same natural law to which they appealed,  the residents of their respective states each must have as much right to say the same thing to their state governments that they were saying to the British regime any time those state governments acted unjustly. And having representative governments alone could not prevent that.

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## Swordsmyth

There is a necessary contradiction between the right to revolt and the power to suppress revolts.

Both are required in order for society to function, some things are like that.

The contradiction must be resolved by wager of battle and the judgement of the GOD of hosts.

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## oyarde

> Not sure if "usurpacious" is a word.
> 
> So the Founders gave the government the authority to suppress "insurrections".
> 
> But dont the people have a right to protest or reform their government?


There are two kinds of insurrections I have seen in my worldly travels . The kind where you win and you get to do what you like and they kind where you lose and they kill you and take all your property. So I would only be interested in any I win .

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