Foundations of liberty
🕊️ Ordered Liberty: Civil Anti-Authoritarianism and Resistance
Ordered Liberty: the shared duty to hold government accountable and to support legitimate government. What a breach of that order looks like, the Concord Principle of Resistance and its standards for self-defense and violent defensive resistance, and how Americans have answered breaches, from Lexington and Concord to slavery, the incarceration of Japanese Americans and the immigration fights of today.
- 1What Ordered Liberty MeansThe definition of ordered liberty as a shared duty to hold government accountable and to support legitimate government, set beside the Supreme Court's use of the same phrase in Palko v. Connecticut (1937).19 min
- 2Legitimate Authority and Its LimitsFrom Romans 13 and Jonathan Mayhew's 1750 sermon through Rutherford, Locke and the Declaration, what makes authority legitimate, where it stops, and how the civil anti-authoritarianism and the idea of a breach in Ordered Liberty grow from that tradition.20 min
- 3Lexington and ConcordThe Powder Alarm, Gage's orders, the night riders, the fight on Lexington Green, the North Bridge and the bloody march back to Boston, told from depositions, letters and Amos Doolittle's 1775 engravings.22 min
- 4Concord: Why the Resistance Was Lawful in Their EyesThe Massachusetts Government Act, the Suffolk Resolves, the Provincial Congress, the militia and the race to London with the depositions, and why the Concord Principle of Resistance is named for Concord.22 min
- 5Slavery: The Founding BreachHow a republic founded on the claim that all men are created equal wrote slavery into its law, how a few in the founding generation saw the contradiction, how ordinary people resisted the Fugitive Slave Acts, and why the Ordered Liberty framework treats slavery as the gravest breach of ordered liberty in American history.24 min
- 6The Incarceration of Japanese AmericansHow the United States removed about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes in 1942, held them in camps such as Minidoka near Hunt, Idaho, and how the Supreme Court, the public and later the Congress answered for it.22 min
- 7Immigration Law and Order TodayHow American immigration law came to be, what the statutes and courts say a noncitizen is owed, where the framework draws the line between lawful protest and unjustified force, and the objections it answers, including the Idaho dairy case.24 min
- 8Forms of Lawful ResistanceThe tools a free people has used to resist power without breaking the republic: petition, press, jury, vote, nullification, civil disobedience and conscientious objection, and the point at which resistance becomes the mob law Lincoln warned against.24 min
- 9Self-Defense and Violent Defensive ResistanceThe core of the Concord Principle of Resistance: how it is built from the law of self-defense, the Five Core Standards of Innocence, Imminence, Proportionality, Avoidance and Reasonableness, its definition of violent defensive resistance, the ladder of protest that comes before force, and the cases that pass and fail the standards.28 min
- 10Supporting Legitimate GovernmentThe other half of ordered liberty: what a free citizen owes a government that earns obedience. Washington on the duty to obey, Jefferson on accepting an election, Lincoln on reverence for the laws, and the framework's account of voluntary obedience, set beside the everyday duties of jury, ballot, taxes, service and watchfulness, and the life of Minoru Yasui.22 min