Maybe I just have an usual perspective. - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 16/11/2010 04:24:41 PM
I didn't realise that's what we were talking about. I don't think it has anything to do with Snoop's analogy, or the matter of your subjectivity. You said treason was OK in that case because God gave the green light.
You have to either take that back, or simply say yes, you are being subjective, that treason is only OK if it's for a cause you support.
You have to either take that back, or simply say yes, you are being subjective, that treason is only OK if it's for a cause you support.
Not at all, but perhaps this is our disconnect: For Me, the Founding Fathers and most leading Enlightenment thinkers, there's a third option created by social contracts: A tyrannical government is itself treasonous, because it's entire legitimacy rests on the delegated authority it treats as irrelevant at best and an annoyance at worst. To restore a legitimate and just government ruling by and for the people is not treason, it's patriotism. What's perplexing is how any Brit, then or now, can accept that as given when speaking of Runnymede, the Cromwells Protectorate or the Glorious Revolution, then dismiss the American Revolution as treason. Someone may be subjectively changing the rules as and when it suits them, but it isn't me.
Turn it around; show me where the British crown was murdering women and children (in America, anyway) and you might have some basis for rationalizing doing the same in resistance to it.
Was I, or Snoop, or anyone trying to rationalize the murder of women and children? No. Is the Al-Qaida? Yes. And, not that it's necessary, but if they wanted to show us any examples the tyrannical power they resist murdering women and children, they would have no problem what so ever.
I think they'd be hard pressed to show us murdering women and children. We don't seek them out, though our bombs aren't perfect and the noble terrorists like to hide behind innocent noncombatants, but I chose my words carefully: "killing" is not "murder". snoop compared the American Revolution to Al Qaeda, and that analogy is deeply flawed. The Continental Army went after soldiers, not second graders.
As to my argument presupposing my conclusion, take it up with Jefferson, Locke, Rousseau et alia, because they routinely argued that government is no more than a social contract, and loses its legitimacy when it defaults on that contract.
Right. Uh. So you're agreeing that the theory of social contract is naive? See that's not what I got from your previous message. You're very confusing.
In a word, no. Opposing a tyrant isn't treason, supporting one is, at least in Western states, which have long accepted the social contract as valid. Hence Jeffersons quote, unless you think it means the man who coined the phrase "separation of church and state" was instead arguing that Gods position as head of state justified rebellion against George III.