When thinking about the more usual type of infringements that one sees today, such as an unlawful arrest or illegal search, I have to agree that resisting with force is absurd. That is, of course, why arrests and searches are followed by court dates and meetings with lawyers.
One does have the right to defend oneself against unlawful deadly force whether committed by another private person or by a representative of our government. All the usual rules of self-defense apply, however. One must be TRULY innocent and not have contributed to the situation. This strays from the question, however, as it isn’t usually defense against a violation of civil rights but simple self defense.
I’m sitting here thinking about how the above question and responses square with the underlying purpose of the second amendment. What else is the second but a guarantee of the ability and an imposition of the duty to use lethal force against agents of our government when that government has become a tyranny? Since a hallmark of tyranny is systematic deprivation of civil rights and liberties, it seems to me that the more interesting question is how does one determine whether and when deprivation of civil rights slips from the ‘case by case’ situation I describe above to become a systematic deprivation that both qualifies as tyrannical and is deserving of armed resistance? How do you decide that the remedies offered by the system to address abuses are no longer functional? When do you have, not only the right, but a duty to revolt?
Personally, I suspect it may be similar to the famous description of porn. “I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it.†In other words, if you have to ask whether it’s time for a revolution, then it’s not. Such resistance to our government would have to be very broad based in order to succeed, since one of the more important responsibilities of our federal government is to put down insurrections. Accordingly, any decision to resist that wasn’t supported by a large proportion of our citizens would fail.
This is the interesting tension in a constitutionalized right to revolution: a duty imposed on the citizens to resist tyranny balanced against the responsibility of the government to resist insurrection. Seems to be working out ok so far.
To get back to Sue Rovr’s original question, it seems to me that making some sort of law that interfered with that tension would be counterproductive. A government which made such a law, would, by definition, not be a tyranny. In addition, if our government authorized the use of force against its agents for civil liberties violations (which is an incredibly fuzzy line), one could argue that it was derelict in its duty to put down insurrection. Indeed, it would come close to fomenting insurrection.
Individuals have no right to resist illegal infringements of civil liberties with force. Illegal infringements are infringements not sanctioned by the government, and so do not trigger either the right or the duty to resist with force. I do believe that a person in that situation has a duty to seek redress in the courts in order to prevent future infringements against others.
At any rate, that’s what I think about that.
