The Earth spins, the sun relatively sets and rises, and we rise with it, sometimes reluctantly, to pursue our exigent purposes. We are compelled by the input around us and respond in a manner that best suits us where we have that choice. We do this day after day, many of us often repeating patterns of behavior, some which garner little contemplation from us as we go about our earthly business. Not only is this type of operating perfectly normal, but necessary to function properly in the world. We make many thousands of assumptions, calculations, estimations, and snap judgements on a daily basis, largely unaware of the underlying mental processes as they seamlessly tether us to our reality and help us move through it (hopefully) successfully.
But how often do we look up? Most of us correctly move within a practically two-dimensional space. Few of us have any real need, cause or means to move meaningfully in the vertical. This has the effect of further grounding us, keeping us thinking in two dimensions wherein we spend the vast majority of the time in our lives. Scurrying around the planet, shifting and roaming feverishly from one task to the next, we infrequently stop to look offworld. But there is something valuable to be found in the outer regions, something we often lack; perspective.
One such perspective echoes in the silence of the space outside our atmosphere. The ever-present reminder that our earthly tasks and worries generally lack the full significance we place upon them. That our practices, customs and legal systems are primarily made up by us. But true authority is not. We have been granted authority over some, few minor things, mostly which consist of the self, and we can offer some of that authority to others when it suits us. Herein lies the premise of the consent of the governed.
As the Washington State Constitution states in Article I, Section 1, “All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights”. But when the government overreaches its granted authority by violating the rules laid down in the constitution(s) which bind it, that consent is withdrawn.
We, the people, grant a fraction of what little authority we have been given by our Creator to our governments that they might preserve our liberty, and help create a peaceful, healthy society. But, of late, our governments have chosen to pervert the authority we have granted them. Not only do they refuse to defend our liberty but insist on repeatedly and consistently attacking it at every turn, making a mockery of our trust. It is at this betrayal that we, the people, withdraw our consent. And here is where the insidious malady, that is government, seeks to maliciously reclaim that authority and stretches out its grasping talons for even more upon which it has no rightful claim. The armed populace is the only force that stands in the way of this miscreant from unjustly seizing what does not belong to it and making slaves of us all.
Its false claim on authority over our lives rests upon a dark lie; that such a violent and vicious intrusion is not only required but requested and that there exists some moral mandate which dictates that the government seize upon our liberty. This is obviously and facially false. The ultimate authority over all things belongs to the force which fashioned us, to which we all owe our existence. That force which will someday take these living bodies of flesh, dismantle them and reuse their content elsewhere in the world. There is no law which can change this, no human authority which can rebuke it, no will that can stand against it. No human or human construct—most especially not an amoral government—is the author of morality. It is our distinctive moral imperative as humans to defend our lives and those of our loved ones from unprovoked violence. No person or government may relieve us of that right and responsibility.
In the end, governments may make whatever nefarious laws they wish, but a quick glance skyward reminds each of us of our place on this planet, of the energy which governs us all, of the power which benevolently shares with us its lifeforce, instructs us to remember our moral duty and shows us that human law is not the Final Authority. Our right and responsibility to self-defense and the defense of those we cherish is not granted or revoked by government. It rests intrinsically with each of us. And we are citizens, not subjects. Regardless of what evil, unjust laws are passed, we will not be moved by their sinister, malefic designs; we will not be disarmed, we will not comply.