A Stupid Poll About The Right To Insurrection

by Daniel Foster - January 14th, 2011 - National Review

The question is phrased thus:
“Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?”

Surprise: while just eleven percent of Democrats and eleven percent of independents believe it is ever justified to take violent action against the government, fully 28 percent of Republicans do. It doesn’t surprise me that there would be a poll trying to put the smell of blood in the water given the climate of the last week. But what does surprise me is that 76 percent of respondents, including 64 percent of Republicans, think it is never right to take up arms against the government. Ever.

What about if the government canceled the next election and started seizing first-born; or arbitrarily disappearing whole classes of citizenry; or summarily abolished private property and confiscated all our belongings at the tip of a bayonet? Not even then? Gosh, even Hobbes thought you had a right to violently resist a state that was trying to kill you. What could these 76 percent be thinking?

(Even worse, eight percent of respondents were unsure! You’d better know what you believe by the time you hear the jackboots round the corner.)

No matter how many good things happen, such as the election outcome last November, it is polls such as this that make me question the future of our nation. Have we truly become such gutless sheep that less than one in three Republicans believe that our freedom is worh fighting for?

Right now, a number of czars appointed by Obama have illegally taken actions to carry out goals that have been explicitly rejected by both our courts and our legislature, merely because Obama thinks they are just. If you are too stupid to hear the jackboots coming based on that unconstitutional seizure of power alone, you truly are as deranged as the psycho who killed the people in Arizona.