If you think suggesting a few blocks or the voices in your head constitute a reasonable effort to address the question, you are fooling only yourself. What point do you hope to score by precisely defining the threshold criteria? Suffice it to say, the group that consisted of the Confederate states easily qualifies. It had more than three times the population of the Original Thirteen Colonies.
What do you possibly hope to gain by pouncing on this trivial point? It seems like you are just intent on wasting both of our times.
Your ability to spout names still doesn't tell me why some rebellions can be put down and some can't, and what the criteria for doing so are.
This is more of your effort to keep the argument in the weeds. If I thought you really wanted an answer, i'd endeavor to define the criteria for you, but you and I both know you don't want an answer. You want your side to be right, and in an effort to make it right, you want to argue about "criteria."
Again, if three times the population of the Original Colonies isn't enough, then no reasonable criteria will satisfy you as to the difference.
After all, the Constitution makes mentions suspending habeas in case of rebellion and calling out the militia to suppress insurrection. Were they hypocrites from the start? Do insurrectionists and rebels need only control a defined area, win a majority of voters (and who decides who can vote?), and invoke "self-evident natural law" in order to make it illegal and immoral to suppress them?
Whatever the Founders meant by "Insurrection" and "Rebellion", It is pretty self evident that they didn't see it as applying to what they did. As what the Southern states did is EXACTLY ALIKE what they did, I must therefore conclude that whatever it is they meant by "Insurrection" and "Rebellion" must refer to something less. My guess is regions or cities defying State or Federal authority, and without popular support from the majority of the affected populace.
As a matter of fact, I think the difference between a natural right to independence and a Rebellion or Insurrection is that one is a consequence of the majority of folk being in favor of a divorce, and the other is a consequence of minority factions attempting to force their way into power against the popular will.
But this is another "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" argument. As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about Pornography. "Pornography is hard to define, but I know it when I see it."
In short, I hope to demonstrate that your notion of a natural right to self-determination upon invocation of self-evident natural law turns out to be conditional and not absolute. And a conditional natural law is no natural law at all.
Again, if three times the population of the Original Colonies isn't enough, then no reasonable criteria will satisfy you as to the difference.
What about one half the population of the original colonies? One-tenth? At what point does that self-evident natural right not apply? I suspect that you refuse to answer because you understand that putting a numerical threshold on a natural right is hypocritical.
As what the Southern states did is EXACTLY ALIKE what they did, I must therefore conclude that whatever it is they meant by "Insurrection" and "Rebellion" must refer to something less.
I'll agree that the confederacy and the colonists did the same thing, and that was to fight a war of rebellion on American soil.
You're big on abstract concepts of natural law, but the bloody fact is that independence isn't won with lofty notions, by invocation of abstract concepts. It is won either by permission of the ruling power or by force. The colonies won their independence by force. The confederacy tried the same thing and lost. And that Natural Right of Rebellion is the real natural right invoked by the colonists and the confederates. And because rebellions are bloody, dangerous affairs with no certainty as to the outcome, the Founders put their warning in the Declaration that it's not something one does except in the face of real intolerable oppression. And that doesn't mean because your side lost an election.
As a matter of fact, I think the difference between a natural right to independence and a Rebellion or Insurrection is that one is a consequence of the majority of folk being in favor of a divorce
Interesting. First, because it's an accepted truth that in the American Revolution (not the American Secession, I'll point out), one third of the people were pro-independence, one third were pro-British, and one-third were neutral. Second, because I'm interested in hearing about how a majority of folk in the south were pro-secession when one third of the folk were slaves.
..., and the other is a consequence of minority factions attempting to force their way into power against the popular will.
But a minority in a larger area can be a majority in a smaller area. Who defines the area? Who defines who is counted in the majority?