@JudgeRightly,
Yet another new direction from which to make the same essential point....
Exactly. My position is internally consistent, which is why your objections keep running into the same distinction. If that same distinction answers you through judges, venue, civil disobedience, “rule of law,” legal recompense, and constitutional enforcement, then maybe it is not a dodge or rationalization. Maybe it is the actual issue.
Civil disobedience is explicitly sanctioned by the proposed constitution...
"Any amendment or command issued by the King in defiance of this Constitution including one that increases taxes, gives all subjects the responsibility to engage in non-violent civil disobedience, including by withholding taxes, against such offense..."
To use your logic...
Who determines that the king has violated the Constitution? (rhetorical question)
That may be rhetorical, but the answer exposes the flaw in your reasoning. The subject determines it for himself, for purposes of his own obedience. That does not give him jurisdiction over the king. Every man is responsible before God to determine whether he may obey without sinning. If the king commands wickedness, imposes an unconstitutional tax, or orders a judge to enforce an unlawful decree, the subject, taxpayer, soldier, or judge may refuse.
But judging whether one may obey is not the same thing as sitting in judgment over the king with authority to punish or remove him. A subject may judge a command unlawful without becoming the king’s judge. A soldier may judge an order unlawful without becoming commander-in-chief. A judge may refuse to enforce an unconstitutional command without acquiring jurisdiction over the throne. Men beneath the king may judge his acts in the moral and constitutional sense necessary for obedience; what they lack is judicial jurisdiction to punish and remove him.
The Constitution already permits ordinary citizens to decide that a king's command is unconstitutional and to withhold obedience from him.
Correct, but that is categorically different from your position. The citizen judges the command for purposes of his own obedience; he is not judging the king from above with authority to punish or remove him. Civil disobedience says, “I cannot lawfully obey this.” Your removal mechanism says, “We have authority to judge you and remove you from office.” One is subordinate refusal to participate in wickedness; the other is superior authority imposing judgment on the king.
Therefore, the Constitution already recognizes that the king's judgment is not the final earthly judgment in every matter. The people themselves are expected to evaluate his actions against the Constitution.
Correct, for purposes of their own obedience. The king’s judgment is not final over another man’s conscience; every man remains responsible before God to determine whether he may obey. But judging whether I may obey is not the same thing as having jurisdiction to punish or remove the king. The people may evaluate, condemn, refuse, resist, and withhold unlawful obedience; they may not convert that moral judgment into judicial authority over the throne. That is the leap you are making, and it does not follow.
If citizens may determine that the king has violated the Constitution and may lawfully resist him through civil disobedience, why is it inconceivable that some constitutional process could determine the same thing and impose a constitutional consequence?
Because that is a category error. You are equivocating on what it means to “determine” or “judge.” A subject may judge the king’s command for purposes of his own obedience; that does not mean some process may judge the king for purposes of punishing or removing him. Civil disobedience says, “I cannot lawfully obey this.” Your proposed process says, “We have authority to impose judgment on the king.” The first is subordinate refusal; the second is superior jurisdiction. That leap does not follow.
Also, have you ever thought through what such "non-violent civil disobedience" would actually look like and how it would be carried out?
I know it wouldn't be pretty. But that's assuming they do.
I refer you back to Christian Heiens's video I posted earlier. Watch it if you haven't already. Again if you have.
How far is this civil disobedience permitted to go?
As far as obedience to God requires.
It goes as far as refusing to participate in wickedness, refusing unlawful commands, refusing unlawful taxes, and refusing to cooperate with unconstitutional acts.
It does not thereby become jurisdiction to remove the king.
What happens when the king arrests those who are withholding taxes?
(I rearranged the questions here to make more sense.)
Then further civil disobedience is required.
What happens when he orders the military to collect it anyway?
Then the military has to decide whether it will obey God or man. None of this happens in a vacuum. You are talking as though the king can simply say “collect the unlawful tax” and reality magically obeys him, but that order has to pass through commanders, officers, soldiers, families, communities, churches, towns, and armed citizens who also have moral agency.
And yes, this is America. There are lots of guns, and armed citizens deter unlawful force against the innocent. If a wicked king ordered the military to enforce an unconstitutional tax against a heavily armed population, that would not be a clean administrative act. It risks national catastrophe. The military might win such a fight, but even if it did, the cost would be enormous: dead citizens, dead soldiers, ruined families, shattered legitimacy, and a nation pushed toward civil war. Those soldiers would not be acting against faceless abstractions; they would be acting against their own countrymen, and in many cases against the people and places they are supposed to defend.
So your framing is too clean. You talk as though the king commands, the military enforces, and therefore civil disobedience is meaningless unless some superior court can remove the king. No. Civil disobedience works precisely because unlawful commands still have to be carried out by men who remain accountable before God, before their neighbors, and before the nation. That may be ugly. It may be costly. It may fail. But difficulty does not create jurisdiction.
What happens when he appoints judges who support him?
Then those judges have to decide whether they are judges under God’s law or servants of the king’s will. A judge’s commission does not make him righteous, does not make his rulings lawful, and does not relieve him of responsibility before God. If he supports the king in wickedness, then he has joined the king in wickedness.
But that still does not create jurisdiction above the king. It only means the nation has a wicked king and wicked judges, which is a moral and civil disaster, but not proof that some higher domestic court must exist. Your question assumes that if wicked men can corrupt the offices beneath the king, the solution is to create another office above the king.
But why would that office be immune? If the king can corrupt judges by appointment, influence, fear, loyalty, or ambition, then ambitious men can corrupt a removal mechanism by influence, fear, loyalty, ambition, accusation, and procedure. So the issue remains the same: where does final earthly authority terminate, and why should I believe your added mechanism will not become the very thing corrupt men fight to control?
The Constitution appears to assume that widespread civil disobedience will either
- Convince the king to back down,
- Convince subordinate officials not to cooperate,
- Convince the military/police not to enforce the order,
- Create sufficient social pressure to stop the violation.
In other words, the remedy is largely political and moral rather than judicial.
Right.
That's the point.
The remedy is moral, social, political, and religious resistance beneath the king, not judicial authority above the king.
That's exactly the distinction I have been making.
But, if the Constitution already contemplates a situation where...
- citizens judge the king's actions unconstitutional,
- citizens refuse obedience,
- citizens refuse taxes,
- officials may refuse cooperation,
...then the Constitution is already relying on human beings to make constitutional judgments against the king.
Supra.
The real difference between Bob's approach and mine isn't whether men may oppose an unlawful king. Indeed, Bob explicitly says they may. The difference is that Bob stops at civil disobedience, while I am arguing that there should also be a lawful mechanism to deal with a king who persists in violating the Constitution.
Yes.
And that “lawful mechanism” is the problem.
If the mechanism can judge and remove the king, then the men administering it are above the king at the point of judgment.
Calling it “lawful” does not change that. It only means the Constitution has placed final earthly authority somewhere other than the king.
In short a more orderly and official form of civil disobedience.
But that is not what civil disobedience is. Civil disobedience is refusal to obey an unlawful command. A state-authorized process that removes the king is not civil disobedience; it is an exercise of superior civil authority. You are trying to describe judicial supremacy as though it were merely organized resistance. It is not.
Let the people resist, but give them a constitutional mechanism that has some realistic chance of prevailing against a king who no longer cares what the Constitution says.
And there it is. For that mechanism to have “some realistic chance of prevailing,” someone must have authority to enforce it against the king. Otherwise, as you said, he is simply not going to care. Who should have that authority: judges, soldiers, officers, a council, the people? Whoever can make that process prevail against the king is above the king at the decisive point.
That is my argument. Your proposal does not avoid final earthly authority; it relocates it, and it does not reckon with the consequences of that relocation. Ideas have consequences. If you create a constitutional mechanism above the king with power to remove him, ambitious men will seek control of that mechanism. It becomes another prize to capture, another lever to pull, and another lawful-looking road to power.
The biblical picture supports my distinction. David knew Saul was wicked, resisted him, fled from him, refused to participate in his evil, and twice had opportunity to kill him (1 Samuel 24, 26). But David would not take it upon himself to remove the Lord’s anointed. Recognizing wickedness is not the same thing as possessing jurisdiction to depose the ruler. That is the distinction between civil disobedience and removal.
