So, It's A Revolution You Want?

Revolution. It is your right.

And no-one can take that right away. More, it is your obligation. It is your duty.

If you were waiting for permission, you need wait no longer. You have had that since the day you were born.

If you were waiting for a hero, he/she ain't coming. The hero is him/her in the mirror. You know him/her very well.

The hero is you. The hero is me. The hero is all of us.

So, when can you start?

Oh I see. You want some evidence that revolution is a tool you always had in your box?

Take a look at this blogpost by I_Amness (Reproduced with his consent. Thanks!) over at the TPUC Forum:

In political philosophy, the right of revolution (or right of rebellion) is the right or duty, variously stated throughout history, of the subjects of a nation to overthrow a government that acts against their common interests. Belief in this right extends back to ancient China, and it has been used throughout history to justify various rebellions, including the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

In Europe, the right of revolution may be traced back to the Magna Carta, an English charter issued in 1215, that required the King to renounce certain rights and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It included a "security clause" that gave the right to a committee of barons to overrule the will of the King through force if needed. The Magna Carta directly influenced the development of parliamentary democracy and many constitutional documents, such as the United States Constitution.

The Golden Bull of 1222 was a golden bull, or edict, issued by King Andrew II of Hungary. The law established the rights of Hungary's noblemen, including the right to disobey the King when he acted contrary to law (jus resistendi). The Golden Bull is often compared to the Magna Carta; the Bull was the first constitutional document of the nation of Hungary, while the Magna Carta was the first constitutional charter of the nation of England.

Thomas Aquinas also wrote of the right to resist tyrannical rule in the Summa Theologica. John of Salisbury advocated direct revolutionary assassination of unethical tyrannical rulers in his Policraticus. In the Early Modern period, the Jesuits, especially Robert Bellarmine and Juan de Mariana, were widely known and often feared for advocating resistance to tyranny and often tyrannicide—one of the implications of the natural law focus of the School of Salamanca.

John Calvin believed something similar. In a commentary on the Book of Daniel, he observed that contemporary monarchs pretend to reign “by the grace of God,” but the pretense was “a mere cheat” so that they could “reign without control.” He believed that “Earthly princes depose themselves while they rise up against God,” so “it behooves us to spit upon their heads than to obey them.” When ordinary citizens are confronted with tyranny, he wrote, ordinary citizens have to suffer it. But magistrates have the duty to “curb the tyranny of kings,” as had the Tribunes in ancient Rome, the Ephori in Sparta, and the Demarchs in ancient Athens. That Calvin could support a right of resistance in theory did not mean that he thought such resistance prudent in all circumstances. At least publicly, he disagreed with the Scottish Calvinist John Knox’s call for revolution against the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor of England.[4]

The Catholic Church shared Calvin's prudential concerns—together with a concern for saving the souls even of tyrants, a concern which was irrelevant in double-predestinarian Calvinism. Thus, the Pope condemned Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot, and Regnans in Excelsis was widely considered to be a mistake. St. Thomas Aquinas had argued that fear of tyrannicide drove tyrants to worse conduct, and that tyrannicide and rebellion tended to end in the placement of an even worse tyrant on the throne—so that the safest course of action for the people was to endure tyranny for as long as it could be borne, rather than run the larger risks of armed revolution. There were no armed revolutionaries remembered among the martyrs of Nero and Diocletian, after all; a preference for enduring what could be endured, like the presumption in favor of peace in just war theory, came to be the more common belief and is the one officially held by the Catholic Church as of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. (Its most controversial recent manifestation was the reigns of Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII; the Church opposed the Nazi government, most notably in the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, and was persecuted for it, but never advocated the assassination of Hitler[citation needed] or released his Catholic subjects from their allegiance to him along the lines of Regnans in Excelsis.)

Use in history

Among the revolutionary movements claimed to seek justification as an exercise of the right of revolution include:

* French War Of Religion: The right of revolution was expounded by the Monarchomachs in the context of the French Wars of Religion, and by Huguenots thinkers who legitimized tyrannicides.
* Glorious Revolution: The right of revolution formed the basis of the philosophical defense of the Glorious Revolution, when Parliament deposed James II of England in 1688 and replaced him with William III of Orange-Nassau.
* American Revolution: The right to revolution would play a large part in the writings of the American revolutionaries. The political tract Common Sense used the concept as an argument for rejection of the British Monarchy and separation from the Empire, as opposed to merely self-government within it. It was also cited in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, when a group of representatives from the various states signed a declaration of independence citing charges against King George III. As the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 expressed it, natural law taught that the people were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and could alter or abolish government “destructive” of those rights.
* French Revolution: The right of revolution was also included in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen during the French Revolution.

The Right of Revolution as an individual or collective right

Although some explanations of the right of revolution leave open the possibility of its exercise as an individual right, it was clearly understood to be collective right under English constitutional and political theory.[5] As Pauline Maier has noted in her study From Resistance to Revolution, “[p]rivate individuals were forbidden to take force against their rulers either for malice or because of private injuries....”[6] Instead, “not just a few individuals, but the ‘Body of the People’ had to feel concerned” before the right of revolution was justified and with most writers speaking of a “ ‘whole people who are the Publick,’ or the body of the people acting in their ‘public Authority,’ indicating a broad consensus involving all ranks of society.”[7]

The concept of the right of revolution was also taken up by John Locke in Two Treatises of Government as part of his social contract theory. Locke declared that under natural law, all people have the right to life, liberty, and estate; under the social contract, the people could instigate a revolution against the government when it acted against the interests of citizens, to replace the government with one that served the interests of citizens. In some cases, Locke deemed revolution an obligation. The right of revolution thus essentially acted as a safeguard against tyranny.

Some of the information came from here.

When you are all ready, I will be right here.

I am cocked, locked, and ready to rock.

Revolution is not for everyone. I know that. We are a tolerant, peaceful people. Lately, however, we have been too tolerant. Incompetence, wrapped up in greed, surrounded by stupidity and smothered in arrogance, is the best we can expect from our useless MPs. There is a remedy, at law, for this. Perhaps a full blown revolution is a smidgen over the top....

Rebellion though, a quiet, lawful and peaceful rebellion, now that's a different kettle of fish. That's something we can all do. A bit of study, a couple of sheets of A4, an envelope, two witnesses and a stamp and you are on your way. Nothing simpler. You just tell them you are taking your ball home because they aren't playing the game properly.

The beauty of this is that they can't do a thing to stop you. Article 61 of the Magna Carta* says so. It is still current, it is still valid, so use it.

I do. It is a lot of fun watching them squirm. I have barely begun. And I have plenty of paper left. The pen truly is mightier than the sword.

* Magna Carta 1215 came into being before the first elected parliament in 1265. Much as they pretend that they can, no government can repeal MC 1215. If it wasn't created by parliament, it cannot be uncreated by parliament. No matter how badly they want to. It wasn't a statute in terms we understand today. This was a deal done between a king and his subjects. Parliament wasn't even a twinkle in anyone's eye at the time.

CR.