As for the Declaration of Independence, it asserts that when any FORM of government becomes detrimental, it can be abolished and replaced with a new FORM. That suggests to me that an American Revolution that keeps the US Constitution is not a revolution but a coup.
Just look at how Washington handled the Whiskey Rebellion as president. He personally led the troops across Pennsylvania on horseback, with Hamilton riding shotgun.
I guess he didn't "welcome the competition" as so many business leaders profess today.
(don't know what happened to my previous post)
“It’s a nonsensical question. When you resort to revolution, you exist in a state of nature. What are you going to do? Go to a court run by the government you seek to overthrow and sue for your right to overthrow them? It’s a complete absurdity. Once the fighting starts, it’s a contest of power and prowess, not rights and law.”
The question is fine, your analysis is what’s nonsensical. Not that you can’t believe in Might Makes Right or be a nihilist. But the question is whether we have natural rights, and if we do it wouldn’t make any difference whether they went unfulfilled because we lost a clash of arms. For that would only mean we lost, not that we were wrong.
Again, you can say Might Makes Right, but that wouldn’t make the question (of whether we have the right to revolution) absurd. You’d just be answering it in the negative.
“As for the Declaration of Independence, it asserts that when any FORM of government becomes detrimental, it can be abolished and replaced with a new FORM”
You insist rather emphatically on the significance of “form.” Why?
We were in a state of nature before we formed governments: we made no `compact’ with `government’ or a form of government. Government is a fictional entity, like a corporation. We made it up.
The `social compact’ was made between people living in a state of nature.
“A great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It had its origin in the principles of society, and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has in man and all the parts of a civilized community upon each other create that great chain of connection which holds it together.” T. Paine
This argument has been continuing since Hobbes “Life is nasty, brutish and short”) and John Locke (much of our Declaration of Independence is taken directly from his writings) then Burke and Paine, and Hamilton and Jefferson; today, Republicrats and conservatives.
“When you resort to revolution, you exist in a state of nature. What are you going to do? Go to a court run by the government you seek to overthrow and sue for your right to overthrow them? It’s a complete absurdity. Once the fighting starts, it’s a contest of power and prowess, not rights and law.”
Oh, I forgot the possibility that you honestly don’t know what the word “right” means, and aren’t aware that one can lose and still be right, or that the law can be broken and there still be law.