A little over a year ago, I began investigating the philosophy of civil disobedience and nonviolence. The purpose is to find out what we might learn about the countervailing philosophy that lies behind the Second Amendment — the idea that an armed people can preserve their freedom.

There are usually two aspects to that idea. First, the fear the people may revolt will supposedly prevent would-be tyrants from destroying the people’s freedoms. Second, even if that fails, and government nevertheless become tyrannical, the people will still have the means to revolt, to overthrow the government and institute a new one that respects their rights.

This theory is found in the writings of some of the Founding Fathers, and is usually offered as the ultimate political justification for the Second Amendment. It also underlies the very theory of representative government: the right to keep and bear arms exists as a surety that the government exists to serve the people, and not the people the government.

Most gun owners who take their Second Amendment rights seriously are familiar with this theory. But in order that we not be caught just parroting an idea that sounds plausible, there should be some real thought behind it — especially since, by talking about the importance of “armed revolt,” we are implicitly advocating the desirability of killing others. The persons who are to be killed may be tyrants, or they may work for tyrants, but the notion behind the Second Amendment ought not to just roll of the tongue without some serious thought behind it.

In my last column (some time ago), I started discussing Thoreau’s essay, Civil Disobedience, which recommends people not cooperate with and disobey laws that require them to be an agent of injustice against others.

The twin pillars of representative government are sometimes said to be the “ballot box and the bullet box” — the vote and the right to bear arms. In my last column I examined Thoreau’s criticism of voting. The mere fact a majority of people support an action does not mean the action is morally right. Numbers do not define what is just or right. Merely expressing an opinion about something one believes is right (which is all a vote is), is really doing nothing for what is right. Only action from principle, Thoreau claims, has the power to change things.

According to Thoreau, then, voting is no safeguard of freedom or of what is right. If what we are taught is the cornerstone of a “government by and for the people” — the vote — is a chimera, then that leaves at least two modes of action by which people may try to preserve or obtain their liberty: armed revolt, and nonviolent non-cooperation. Later in this series I will discuss the work of a man who talks about a third way.

Don’t Cooperate

If we set aside voting as a lot less than it’s cracked up to be, we can see that non-cooperation has at least two merits neither voting nor armed revolt has: it is something that can be acted upon at all times (as opposed to once every two or four years, for example), and is a means of opposing predations on liberty both great and small.

And we can also see there are two serious problems with the theory arms will secure our freedom. First, the moral problem. Taking life is not justified except in defense of one’s own life, or that of others, when in imminent peril. There is no moral doctrine stating, for example, that it’s acceptable to begin murdering government officials when they start taking “too much” in taxes, when they draft our sons and daughters for war, when they illegally intercept and read our e-mails, when they force us to use toilets with one gallon flush capacity, or any of a million other tyrannies large and small.

While moral considerations will not restrain true tyrants, not having a moral justification for killing others will prevent most men from taking up arms until there is almost nothing left to lose.

Second, armed revolt is cataclysmic. It marks an end to life as we know it. Once people have embarked on a course of armed confrontation with the government, their normal life is over, and they are on a path that leads either to liberty, victory and vindication, or to death. The cataclysmic nature of this option bids well to insure it will virtually never be chosen. The consequences are too dire and one is too alone.

Consider. At what point do you sound the call to arms? At what point do you believe you can count on your fellow citizens to join you in your call to arms? When government is taking 50 percent of your income in taxes, or 65 percent, or never — as long as it leaves you just enough to get by? When it cuts your social security benefits? When the administration engages in routine and extensive illegal wiretapping and electronic surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment and claims it has the right to do so and will not stop? When do you pull the trigger?

Tim McVeigh reportedly hoped his retaliation for the murder of innocents by federal agents in Waco, Texas might trigger a second American revolution to reign-in the federal government. Obviously, it did not. While it led to Congressional hearings, no federal agent was sent to jail or even publicly censured. McVeigh misjudged: Waco was not enough tyranny.

Both moral considerations and the fact armed rebellion ends a man’s normal life and leads to death, essentially insure armed revolt is an option that will be chosen not on the basis of whether the government is engaged in any particular act of tyranny or even in wholesale tyrannical practices — but only by reference to the loss of life itself.

That is, it’s an option that will not be chosen until there is virtually nothing left to lose. And between liberty and the degree of tyranny where you have almost nothing left to lose, there is a very large space for injustice, subjugation and exploitation.

We learned from de la Boetie in our first two articles in this series that men easily become habituated to their servitude and soon come to accept it as part of their very identity and as “just the way things are.” It seems, then, the theory of armed revolt underlying the Second Amendment easily lends itself to insuring we are simply the proverbial frogs in the pot. As a last resort, it comes far too late — if ever.