“Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God”

The title to the piece was a motto proposed after July 4, 1776, by Benjamin Franklin to be placed on the great seal of the United States. It shows that Franklin understood, that tyrants, never desist, until they are forced to quit. Franklin captured a sentiment that ran throughout the revolutionaries fighting to shed a system of government that viewed them as “Subjects” rather than free men with the right of self governance. The American constitution was set up to not only establish, but also to protect the rights of its people.

   The bible teaches that, “You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. 1 Corinthians 7.23. William Penn said, “Those who will not be governed by God, will be ruled by tyrants,”  and the Psalms teach that “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. Psalm 118.9

   Today, carefully listen to the pronouncements of our government officials. Human “rights” have been replaced by “privileges,” granted to us at the whim of the state. “You now need a government pass, Citizen, to buy, sell, travel or work.” When I was young, my brother was tormented by a bully at his kindergarten. The people who ran the kindergarten wouldn’t make the problem cease; so my parents taught my brother how to fight. My poor brother was a gentle soul, who simply wanted to live in peace among his kindergarten class mates. But he reluctantly learned to fight. One morning, my mother pulled up to the kindergarten and as my brother went to get out of the car, she said, “remember Gardner, punch him in the nose.” My brother, dutifully left the car, found the bully and punched him in the nose. That was the end of my brother’s torment. And to a more important point, it was the end of the torment the bully was bringing to the other children who were also oppressed. My brother is a lot like many of us: we want to just be left in peace until our peace is taken away. Franklin is saying, “we obey God when we fight tyranny of any and all kinds.”

     After the revolution in Russia, the bourgeoisie was allowed to continue in existence for a period of time. The state needed them. They suffered indignities like having the Communist Party force them into housing and supporting strangers in their homes. Finally, the charade ended and many of the middle class in St. Petersburg, were rounded up and made to work on building canals in freezing temperatures with only hand tools or even just their hands.  Most died there, struggling to build canals to nowhere.  

     America today seems to resemble China during the Cultural Revolution, more than it does what was once the United States; or Winston Smith’s, “Minute of Hate” from the novel 1984. And just as in China and Russia, it is the middle class, and the intellectual ideals of freedom and human rights that are under attack in America today. Tyrants hate individual freedom because they cannot control it. There are plenty of tyrants and bullies ready to point their fingers at whom we should hate; whom we should denigrate and marginalize. We are better than this! We should be lifting up, not tearing down. My master commands that, “He without sin should cast the first stone.” And as Abraham Lincoln so elegantly said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” which is taken from Mathew 12:25. Christianity has always called us to be our better selves; to love one another. Sometimes however, gentle, loving kindness has to be defended by might.      

    The second amendment has nothing to do with hunting or self-defense; it is in the constitution so the people can defend their rights against a tyrannical government. A gun allows a person to punch the government bullies in the nose. It gives the citizens power to resist the tyrants, just as our founding fathers envisioned. And that is why some political leaders are so intent about confiscating guns. They want the tyrants to be given free reign over you and the ones you love. They can only succeed if you are disarmed and put at their mercy. The “Auld Gun” protects us from tyranny.

    Robert Dinsmoor, the Rustic Bard, wrote a poem filled with veneration to the old family gun. It is written in a way that gives the gun personification.

The Auld Gun

…Nae Dinsmore arms would never surrender…

For them, I was a bold defender…

When master brought me to this land,

I aye stood charged at his right hand;…

Against Dinsmore!

My hail was death, at his command,

With thundering roar!

    Morrison says, “Robert Dinsmoor…owner of the gun, was an immigrant from Ireland in the year 1730. He settled in that part of Londonderry now Windham.” He was one of Windham’s first three selectmen in 1742. “He was one of the first commissioned officers of the Train Band in Windham, N.H., and had the command of militia at (fort) No. 4, now Charlestown N.H., in the time of the old French and Indian War… The old gun seemed to have a charmed life. It passed from its original owner, Robert, to his eldest son John, who was one of the leading men in town—-town clerk, moderator, selectman, delegate to the Provincial Congress at Exeter N.H., in 1775, a justice of the peace, an elder in the Presbyterian Church. (and a slave-owner) He married Martha, daughter of Justice McKeen and was blessed with 12 children…  John Dinsmoor’s grandson, John Bell Dinsmoor, inherited the “Auld Gun.” He was born in Ripley New York, and lived in Kansas and Missouri from 1859 to 1861. He enlisted in Company I-9th N.Y. Calvary, as a private in 1861.” John, the slave owners grandson, fought for the Union and the freedom of the slaves in the America. He became a Lieutenant and Provost Master of the Calvary.

The slave system in the Americas was tyranny on a grand scale. Slavery was enshrined in the laws of nation states which clearly illustrates the point that not all laws are just, simply because they have become the law. Martin Luther King stated the following about unjust laws:

One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
April 16, 1963

    “…In August 1791, after two years of the French Revolution and its repercussions in [Hispaniola], the slaves (in Haiti) revolted. The struggle lasted for 12 years. The slaves defeated in turn the local whites and the soldiers of the French monarchy, a Spanish invasion, a British expedition of some 60,000 men, and a French expedition of similar size under Bonaparte’s brother-in-law. The defeat of Bonaparte’s expedition in 1803 resulted in the establishment of the Negro state of Haiti which has lasted to this day…” Los Angeles Times Op-Ed by Howard French Oct 10, 2021. They never would have succeeded without having had guns.       

    “Without weaponry, the slavocracy could not have enslaved the Haitian population in the colonial plantation system. The same guns that had been used to oppress and exploit enslaved Haitian laborers, however, became tools in the hands of those who self-emancipated by fighting for freedom. Armed with weapons and organized to fight in its own national and class interests, the Haitian Revolution militarily defeated the armies of the colonial slavocracy.” Workers World: https://www.workers.org/2013/01/6347/“

While there was no revolution of slaves in America as such, there were other actions taken by both whites and blacks to resist the tyranny of slavery. One of the finest, most noble, as well as elegant, was the simple yet heroic act of “self emancipation.” Blacks broke “the law” and courageously ran away from their masters and the unjust system the slave-owners had created. They separated themselves from the tyrants in an act of obedience to God. Whites all over the northeast also broke “the law,” for it was illegal to assist run-away slaves. The federal government enforced the law and federal agents rounded up run-away slaves. Thousands of African Americans travelled the underground railroad to freedom and hundreds of whites acted as advocates and helpers in their escape…all broke the laws and rebelled against tyranny. They all were American hero’s; they said enough.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, most eloquently describes the senselessness of a lack of action and acquiescence to tyranny.   “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Open your eyes, don’t you see yet? The mandates, the firings, the insults, the virus, the fear, contrived shortages, the hysteria, the destruction of the middle class, the dangerous vaccination of children with experimental substances, the constant propaganda, has nothing to do with a very weak boogey man called Covid-19: It all has to do with controlling your mind with fear so you will accept tyranny. They are moving forward with the Plan and you do not even feel the chains and manacles as they are being placed around your hands, legs and neck. If you do not resist, what is coming is human slavery on a scale and with a horror, never before experienced on earth. Some people prefer servitude but as for me “give me liberty or give me death.” Resist. Do not comply.

Workers World: https://www.workers.org/2013/01/6347/“