Hello, jh_081; I'm pleased to make your acquaintance.
From what I understand the laws of treason forbid an American from writing or saying anything that would harm his country or advocate its violent overthrow.
According to the Constitution (Article III Section 3), "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
But it seems to me rebellion is a very productive way to keep the Government i check. I even remember reading a quote by one of the founding fathers saying that rebellion renews freedom. On the other hand we don't want to be raising anti-American extremists in our own country, which I belive would be inevitable if we had freedom to rebel.
Actually, rebellion itself--that is, of the armed variety--is a very dangerous thing, on both ends. It's not something to be taken lightly: even if the people do manage to overthrow the existing government, it cannot realistically be predicted what will replace it. It might well be replaced by something even worse. (It could be pointed out that in Iraq under Saddam, at least there wasn't widespread looting.)
But of course it's also dangerous on the other end: if a people is forced into armed rebellion, lots of politicians and bureaucrats will most likely not have a very nice day. So while rebellion isn't a threat we should make lightly, it's also not likely to be
taken lightly by the government. So--as you say, the threat of rebellion is handy for keeping a government in check.
As for the anti-American extremists, it's important to try to look at the world the same way our Founders did. It would have been nearly impossible for them to imagine anti-American extremists (well, other than the British, who conceivably might try to retake their lost colony, and perhaps insane people), because the government they designed was weak and neutral enough that it didn't really have enough power to honk anybody off. The only reason we have anti-American extremists today is because our government is now powerful enough to interfere in
everybody's business. That means that it makes people angry, some of them mortally so. Therefore, of course, it must protect itself by becoming even bigger and more powerful and oppressive, which means that it makes even more people angry enough to kill somebody, which means...but you get the picture.
The very fact that there
are anti-American extremists--enough of them to cause a potential problem, anyway--is a sign that our government is wayyyy out of whack.
So my question is do we have the right to rebel, and if not should we? This question is just hypothetical I don't belive we are to the point where rebellion is needed.
Your answer, I think, is in the Declaration of Independence: "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to 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."
My second question is about the 2nd amendment. Since we have the freedom to bear arms, what is "arms". Could this mean we should have the right to own tanks, artillery, , ect. Obviously this has problems in a society like ours. This would probaly cause mass destruction by the hands of criminals. So how far should the 2nd amendment go?
The best exposition of this point I've ever heard came from Vin Suprynowicz, in his book
The Ballad of Carl Drega. (It's a book I highly recommend to the sort of folks to whom my views make a lot of sense: but if you're going to get it, go ahead and buy
Send In the Waco Killers too. Call it an investment in liberty.)
He points out that in our system of government, the government has only the powers that have been delegated to it by the people. And, of course, in order to delegate a power to the government, the people have to have that power to start with. I can't delegate to the government the power to kill whomever I don't like, for example, because I don't have that right myself.
Now: does the government have the power to own tanks and artillery? Evidently
it thinks it does. If so, it must have gotten that power from us, because there's no other legitimate place it could have come from. And if it did, that means that we must have delegated it, and therefore must have it to delegate. So...if the government has the power to own tanks and artillery and [...] and nuclear weapons, then ipso facto so do we.
As for "mass destruction by the hands of criminals," it's important not to fall into gun-grabber thinking. Laws have nothing to do with the activities of criminals; making a law that 155mm howitzers can't be owned by individuals will do nothing to keep them out of the hands of criminals.
On the other hand, from a strictly pragmatic point of view, tanks and howitzers are not really the sorts of weapons that are tactically useful in an armed revolution. For that sort of thing, you want mostly individual weapons--rifles, pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, grenades, antitank rockets and mines, demolitions explosives. But the mere fact that tanks and artillery aren't really necessary for armed rebellion doesn't mean that we don't have the right to own them if we have the desire and the means--not as long as the government can own them.
