When Do We Revolt?

Henry David Thoreau writes that “All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable”. This may be a fact, but what is not a fact is that all men (and women) do not recognize, or at least agree, on when it becomes a necessity to revolt or conduct revolution. Although we may have differing ideas, I believe that we have already been given an exact measurement as to what constitutes an act of revolution against the American government.
In present day America, citizens riot and protest in the streets for any number of reasons. As of the announcement that Donald Trump won the election for President of the United States in November of 2016, it would seem that any reason is also a good reason to go out and call for civil war. That being said, I believe that this is absolute nonsense. I, however, seem to be the minority opinion. In September of 2017, Katie Williams wrote an article for the website “The Hill” in which she stated, “Anti-fascist activists, or ‘antifa’, increasingly mobilized in the wake of President Trump’s election, are unapologetic about what they describe as the necessary use of violence to combat authoritarianism.” Authoritarianism is defined as the enforcement of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. Interestingly enough, the only authority that has been asked to be obedient to is the law and I do not believe that abiding by the law is any reason to riot or revolt against the President of the United States.
In fact, the founding fathers, in their ultimate wisdom and uncanny ability to foresee the trials of this country long before they ever occur, left all of us an exact set of circumstances in which it is proper to rise up against our government. In the second paragraph of the United States’ Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers wrote,

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

It was stated outright at the very moment that our country became a country, when the founding fathers initiated their own revolution against the tyrannical government of Great Britain, the very circumstances that they say fit to begin revolution.
The opposition may argue that we are experiencing a similar state of affairs at present but I submit that in order for a government or, in the case of the always hated President Donald Trump, an individual in government to be considered to be acting in a fashion that constitutes being defined as destructive that one must first identify the laws or article of the constitution that is being violated or disregarded. I ask that those who believe the government has reached a point in which it is time to take up arms against it to point out where violations have been purposefully perpetrated, for without being able to clearly demonstrate that one’s government has overstepped their bounds into realm of tyranny the peoples who choose to arm themselves against a lawful government are not revolutionaries but terrorists; terrorists are defined as persons who use unlawful violence in the pursuit of political aims.
I submit that, as citizens of what, in my opinion, is the greatest country to ever be, that we understand that there is a need for revolution when our government turns on us, but that time is not now. I believe that if and or when the time to take up arms is upon us that every man and woman will be able to see it. I believe that it is time that the citizens of this country recognize not only that there may be a time for revolution but that they recognize the correct set of circumstances laid out for us by our founding fathers to know when that time has come.