They inherited it from British history and from two seminal books, Algernon Sidney’s “Discourses Concerning Government” and John Locke’s “Two Treatises of Government,” published in 16, respectively. The founders, of course, did not create the doctrine of nonviolent revolution against tyranny. It is the essence of the American experiment, beginning in the 1760s and 1770s with the colonists’ defiance of the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act and the Intolerable Acts and in the 19th and 20th centuries with the abolitionist movement, women’s suffrage movement, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments, and the civil rights movement and today with nonviolent fights for racial justice, equal voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights and women’s reproductive rights. This right of resistance against inequality and tyranny is the American way. Rather, it was an idea that encompassed the right to resist unconstitutional acts through nonviolent civil disobedience - and, only when this failed after long sufferance, by formal withdrawal from unjust government in the defense of freedom, equality and the right of the people to govern themselves. Perhaps no idea has done so much to advance the cause of liberty and equality in the United States as the “right of revolution.” As we celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence this Fourth of July, it’s important to remember the meaning and origins of that political principle, one of the most transformative in American history.įor the founders, the right of revolution did not imply violent overthrow of government.
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