This Isn't Anti-American. It's a Right and a Duty.

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]alter or abolish. Despite those words in the Declaration of Independence, the establishment would have you believe that any effort to resist their power is anti-American.

[00:00:12]But they've got it totally backwards. So on this episode, it's the founders framework, the right to provide new guards as the people see fit. Government permission not needed. and when that right rises to a level of duty. But first of all, before getting to that, welcome and thank you for joining me here on the path to liberty. My name is Michael Balden with the 10th Amendment Center and this is the show for Wednesday, May 6th, 2026.

[00:00:45]And let's go right to the Declaration of Independence, which makes it pretty clear that the reason government exists in the first place is to secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And when it does the opposite, here's how they put it.

[00:01:01]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 affect their safety and happiness. But this was not saying that you go from one act of arbitrary power, one invasion of your liberty to a vicious aggressive revolt in a single step. No, prudence indeed will dictate that governments longest established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And all the way back, I think around 350 BC, somewhere around there, Aristotle made the case that even when things get to that level, the people who should do something about it, usually don't.

[00:02:03]He wrote, "Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, for they alone can with reason be deemed absolutely unequal, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so."

[00:02:18]And this historical truth, this reality was also reflected in the Declaration of Independence. And accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evil evils are sufferable than to write themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

[00:02:41]and Jefferson and company they were making it clear that the present suffering there in 1776 in America wasn't due to weakness it was patience they wrote such has been the patient sufference of these colonies and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government and eventually it gets to a point this is the point where they were at when enough is enough because they knew as Thomas Gordon put it in Ko's letters back in the 1720s, a failure to actually resist and stop tyrants guarantees that the tyranny will continue and it'll probably keep getting worse and worse and worse. He wrote that not to resist any man's wickedness is to encourage it.

[00:03:37]Now, that brings us back to that famous line in the Declaration of Independence, drafted first by Thomas Jefferson, then edited primarily by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. When a long train of abuses and usurppations, pursuing invariably the same object, invinces a design to reduce them under absolute desperatism.

[00:04:02]It is their right. It is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.

[00:04:13]Now Jefferson years later in a letter to Henry Lee, he made the case that they were just what they were put in the Declaration of Independence. This wasn't just about coming up with new principles. This was not radical in the views of the people. They were actually reflecting the widely held views of the day. And that's what the goal of the Declaration of Independence was. He said, "Not to find out new principles or new arguments never before thought of.

[00:04:42]Not merely to say things which had never been said before. Instead, he said it was intended to be an expression of the American mind." And one of the most important expressions of the American mind at that time in the 1770s was the right, as John Allen put it, to resist and restrain tyrants. He said, "Though you cannot prevent the unconstitutional design of the arbitrary power of the British Ministry, so they can't put a stop to what they're trying to do in London, but you can do something about it here at home." He said, "Yet you have an undoubted right to resist and prevent their reigning over you or ruining you in the violation of your laws and rights."

[00:05:36]After years of suffering under arbitrary power, that long list of injuries and usurpations, one of the biggest questions in the leadup to July 4th, 1776, well, when is that line crossed?

[00:05:49]When does usurpation of power get to the level of reducing the people under absolute desperatism, turning a right to resist, a right to alter or abolish into a duty? Now, as John Dickinson put it in 1774, there was no clear legal answer. It was a gray area. He said, "No English lawyer, as we remember, has pointed out precisely the line beyond which, if a king shall go, resistance becomes lawful." And despite not having a clearly delineated line in the sand, Dickinson insisted a line still existed.

[00:06:30]He said, "We assert a line there must be and shall now proceed with great deference to the judgment of others to trace that line according to the ideas we entertain." Now Jefferson's use of the phrase patient sufference in the Declaration of Independence like everything else in the Declaration was quite intentional and again it was an expression of the American mind or as he put it here all its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day. Few express this particular harmonizing sentiment better than the Reverend Simeon Howard. In his widely read sermon to the ancient and honorable artillery company in Boston, he made both the religious and philosophical justification for physically defending liberty against external force and constraint. And it started out with the natural right of self-defense which is part it part of the duty of self-preservation. He said now for men to stand fast in their liberty means in general resisting the attempts that are made against it in the best and most effectual manner they can. And he really reflected that phrase patient sufference in the Declaration of Independence explaining the American view that well their view was to hold the line for a long time a very patient process before taking more active measures we'll call it. He said when anyone's liberty is attacked or threatened, he is first to try gentle methods for his safety to reason with and persuade the adversary to desist if there be opportunity for it or get out of his way if he can and if by such means he can prevent the injury, he is to use no other. And Arthur Lee down in Virginia, he made the same case.

[00:08:32]The Americans took the position that they had a moral duty to try everything as long as possible before going to repelling force by force. He said they are too much enlightened not to know that they cannot be justified in proceeding to extremities till they have tried every means of obtaining redress in vain. And those first steps, again, back to Howard, they all have to be nonviolent. And even if you're successful, unfortunately, with peaceful non-compliance, the worst of the tyrants, they are going to keep coming back for more. They all knew this, but they still believe they had a moral duty to go through the process. He said, "But the experience of all ages has shown that those who are so unreasonable as to form designs of injuring others are seldom to be diverted from their purpose by argument and persuasion alone. You might you got to try it, but you got to know that when they're really bad people, it doesn't matter what you say, they will not stop." He said, "Notwithstanding all that can be said to show the injustice and humanity of their attempt, they persist in it till they have gratified the unruly passion which set them to work."

[00:09:56]And Arthur Lee pointed out the same truth later published in the Declaration of Independence. Americans dealt with this patiently and peacefully for years.

[00:10:08]He said, "The Americans have in fact exhausted every peaceable means of obtaining redress. For seven years, they have incessantly complained and petitioned for redress. Their return has invariably been a repetition of injuries, aggravated by the most intolerable insults.

[00:10:29]There has not been a single instance in which they have complained without being rebuked or in which they have been complained against without being punished.

[00:10:41]But patience that lasts forever, that really isn't patience. That's surrender.

[00:10:47]And back to Howard, he said, "And in this case, what is to be done by the sufferer? Is he to use no other means for his safety but remmonstrance or flight when these will not secure him?"

[00:10:58]It's like the Terminator going after Sarah Connor. It is going to be relentless. A government run by tyrants, maybe that's redundant, but a government run by tyrants will never stop just because you ask them to stop or you try to get out of their way. They are going to chase you down until they get you.

[00:11:17]Howard continued, "Is he patiently to take the injury and suffer himself to be robbed of his liberty or his life if the adversary sees fit to take it? Nature certainly forbids this tame submission and loudly calls for a more vigorous defense. And again, this natural right of self-defense, this is grounded in the duty of self-preservation, what they considered the first law of nature. And we can see it here from Samuel Adams in the rights of the colonists in November 1772. He said among the natural rights of the colonists are these. First a right to life. Secondly to liberty, thirdly to property together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.

[00:12:09]These are, he said, evident branches of rather than deductions from the duty of self-preservation commonly called the first law of nature.

[00:12:23]And Howard showed how those dots were connected in practice. He said self-preservation is one of the strongest and a universal principle of the human mind. And this principle, he said, allows of everything necessary to self-defense, opposing force to force and violence to violence. He said, "This is so universally allowed that I need not attempt to prove it."

[00:12:55]In the harsh winter of December 1776, after the war had been going on for about 20 months, Thomas Payne made a very similar case. Force is only to be used in response to force, never initiated. He said, "Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder." But if a thief, he said, break into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threaten to kill me or those that are in it, and to bind me in all cases whatsoever to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? Of course, the answer is no. And years earlier, in another very famous and highly influential sermon, the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew took it to the next level. There's actually a point when the tyranny or the tyrant gets so bad that it becomes morally criminal to not resist. He said for a nation thus abused to arise unanimously and to resist their prince even to the dethroning him it's not criminal. Instead he said this is a reasonable normal way of making use of a gift of our creator. He said but a reasonable way of vindicating their liberties and just rights. It is making use of the means and the only means which God has put into their power for mutual and self-defense.

[00:14:23]And he said it would be highly criminal in them not to make use of this means.

[00:14:29]It's a gift of your creator and to not use it. It's a duty of self-preservation. That's pretty bad. He said it would be stupid tameness and unaccountable folly for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious and cruel man to wanting and riot in their misery. And in the end, he said, in such a case it would of the two be more rational to suppose that they that did not resist than that they who did would receive to themselves damnation.

[00:15:05]And Samuel Adams gave us the logical conclusion. There is nothing worse than a person, people, or an entity that wages war on your rights or a failure to defend them against all enemies, foreign or domestic. He said, "The people hold the invasion of their rights and liberties the most horrid rebellion and a neglect to defend them against any power whatsoever, the highest treason."

[00:15:36]And ultimately, as John Lockach put it, the best way to prevent government from reducing you to absolute despatism, make them an offer they can't refuse. He wrote, "The properest way to prevent the evil is to show them the danger and injustice of it who are under the greatest temptation to run into it."

[00:16:03]If you're anything like me, this is definitely not the kind of stuff you ever learned about in the governmentrun and government approved so-called education system. And that's a huge part of the reason why we work so hard here at the TAC every single day and especially this year 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to reach and teach more and more people about these essential foundational principles. And nothing helps us do this work more than the financial faith and support of our members. If you got a couple of bucks of that quickly devaluing dirty government fiat, please consider throwing it our way over at 10th amendmentcenter.com/members.

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