If one digs deeply enough into the
minds of the majority of Americans –
that is, of those Americans who were
shocked by the mob assault on the seat
of America’s Constitutional republic –
one finds at the core of their thinking
(some admittedly vague notion of)
the Constitution. However inchoately
expressed, ideas like “representative
government,” “rule of law,” and
“equal protection under the law” are,
in this view, the essence of American
liberal, republican democracy. Tyranny,
in this view, is government behavior
that violates the basic principles
of the Constitution.
If one digs equally deeply into the
thinking of those Americans who see
the current government as tyrannical,
however, it is not an assumption
of the fundamental rightness of the
Constitution one finds, but an embrace
of the more radically liberal claims
enunciated in the Declaration of Independence.
This rejection of the foundational
nature of the Constitution is
hardly surprising: even at the time
of its adoption, the Constitution was
vigorously opposed by many Americans
who saw in the Constitution
an abandonment of
the principles of the
Declaration and the
creation of a government
that would possess
tyrannical power.
In this view, the
foundational political
document is the Declaration
of Independence, a document
that can be interpreted as arguing that
the sole legitimate purpose of government
is to protect the individual’s
freedom to live as he or she chooses.
From the viewpoint of this second
group, government has no business
trying to change an individual’s or a
community’s way of life. “Don’t tread
on me!” is this group’s attitude toward
government; government’s role
is simply to protect and defend the
individual’s and community’s freedom
to choose
their way of
life. However
ill-advised or
even repugnant
a community’s
culture,
mores,
or institutions
might appear to those who control the
government or to the general public,
any governmental attempt to alter
these is, by this alternative definition,
a tyrannical overextension of govern-
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Like the nineteenth
century industrial revolution,
this revolution is generating
traumatic, even brutal,
social change.
12 | SAM MAGAZINE 1/21