Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Would outright rebellion be justified today in the United States? If the answer is "no," it is not because our current government is perfectly just or even largely just. The United States essentially leads the world in incarcerating its own citizens. Our police forces shoot more people per day than the combined forces of England and Wales shoot per year . We routinely launch wars of choice against nations we find somewhat offensive. The political state of the country is so far gone that people are regarding Donald Trump as a possible president . But the answer is still no. Why? One very strong reason is that any such rebellion today stands about a 0% chance of actually making things better, and absent that condition, rebellion is never justified, since every rebellion holds the possibility of making things much, much worse. The U.S. is not today Syria... but it could be tomorrow.

Analyzed here : "[Burke] believed [that] the fact that a government has provided for their needs—insofar as a government can do that—to the reasonable satisfaction of its subjects over a long period of time is a far better proof of their consent and a more solid title to authority over them than the express consent of individuals told by the head would be. A government endowed with such a 'prescriptive' title, according to Burke, is a legitimate government. It may lawfully he overthrown only if it commits those grave and continued abuses that have traditionally been considered to justify revolution. For the duty to obey constituted governments is an obligation under natural law that springs from men’s nature as social and political beings, and not from the sovereign wills of naturally, isolated individuals."

"what does it matter under whose rule a man lives, being so soon to die, provided that the rulers do not force him to impious and wicked acts?" (Quoted in Manent, p. 257) This would seem to offer us a criterion for when rebelling against a government is acceptable: is the government forcing you into service as a prostitute, asking you to round up a minority group for execution, or forcing you to take part in cattle raids on the neighbors in the next country? Then one may rebel. Is your complaint that the government won't let you chew khat, or won't allow publication of your political tract, or asks everyone to wear blue clothing on Tuesdays? Well then, no one may not rebel. Note: I am not here interested in debating whether Augustine's criterion is a good one. All I am saying here is, "This seems to be what Augustine thought." I am interested in studying the history of notions of proper authority and just rebellion: maybe once my study is done I wil...

Faced with the threat of Lutheranism being wiped out, Luther at first stuck to his guns on passive obedience: '"It is in no way proper for anyone who wants to be a Christian to stand up against the authority of his government, regardless of whether that government acts rightly or wrongly," for even if "his Imperial Majesty acts unjustlyand operates contrary to his duty and oath, this does not nullify the authority of Imperial government, nor does it nullify the necessity of obedience."' Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought , 196-197 However, by 1530, Luther, faced with immense pressure to resist the Emperor from fellow Lutherans, and presented with two theories that justified active resistance, capitulated.

Taxation is not theft: "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves." -- Romans 13 The key idea implicit here, and the one that turned me on the subject of whether or not taxation is theft, is that "every soul" owes obedience to the "governing authorities." Now, if that is a debt I truly owe , then, when those authorities levy the taxes they need to do the job of governing, I owe them those taxes, and attempts to collect them certainly do not constitute acts of theft. And obviously it doesn't matter at all, from this point of view, whether or not I "signed" any sort of "social contract." (In fact, the history of political thought since the Reformation can be read as an attempt to find a secular rep...

"The fears and suspicions engendered by the radical revolutionary ideas adumbrated during the Interregnum made suggestions for even the most modest and logical change anathema for a hundred years to come... Once again the result of the projects of the revolutionaries was the exact opposite of what they had intended... The preexisting élite became more deeply entrenched in property and power. Fear that any change might once more open the floodgate of revolution blocked reasonable reform to meet new conditions for over a century." -- Lawrence Stone, "Results of the English Revolutions," Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 , p. 59 - 61