Is There an American Right of Revolution? If the most widely read and widely approved American book on the Declaration of Independence were right, twentieth-century Ameri- cans would be wrong to continue to cherish the Declaration as a national treasure. Carl Becker, the late, eminent Cornell University historian, in his book The Declaration of Independence, argued that the famous second paragraph of the Declaration is "a frank assertion of the right of revolution," which is useful doctrine when revolution is wanted but a nuisance when stability and preservation of the status quo are sought. Becker concluded that the Declaration of Indepen- dence and "the right of revolution" began to lose their relevance for the United States soon after the Constitution was adopted and went out of vogue in America, completely and permanently, early in the nineteenth century. The Right of Revolution I think that Becker was wrong; the Declaration of Independence does not assert the right of revolution. That phrase, by the way, ascribed by many, Becker among them, to John Locke, does not occur in Locke's writings, nor does it occur in the Declaration of Independence. I make no claim to being a historian of the American Revolution, but Clinton Rossiter, another late Cornell professor who did make that claim, wrote of the revolutionary era that "it is impossible to discover an important American author who wrote in defense of 'the right of revolution."' This should not surprise us because, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest use of the phrase was about 1848. Something in the Declaration does seem to advocate a right to revolution, however, and we should not quibble about words when we are talking about profound political matters on which the safety and happiness of billions of people may depend. Let me quote the familiar passage to you, so that we all have the sound of it in our ears again, and then I will try to explain what I think its argument is: 46 A RIGHT OF REVOLUTION? We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness-That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government. There is one more similar sentence we ought to hear again: But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. "The right of the people to alter or abolish" "any form of govern- ment" is what Becker and others take as indicating a right of revolu- tion. My purpose is to show that "the right of the people to alter or abolish" is fundamentally different from the right of revolution and that this right of the people, properly understood, not only does not go out of vogue after a successful revolution but has a continuing and indispensable role to play in perpetuating limited constitutional gov- ernment. To understand "the right of the people to alter or abolish," we must understand what the Declaration means by "rights," "the peo- ple," and "government." Let me start with the last. The Absence of Government To understand what Jefferson and other sons of Locke meant by government, we must consider men and women as they are in an ungoverned situation, living together or in contact with one another in the absence of government. Many of us resist this idea as far- fetched or even impossible, because all of us were born in political society and cannot conceive what it would be like to live without government or even that it is possible for human beings to live together without government. I understand what they have in mind when they make this objection; yet I would respond by assuring you that all of you know many very eminent people who live in an ungoverned situation with other men and women. I will also show that all of you have yourselves experienced directly the ungoverned life. 47 THE CONSTITUTION-OLD IDEAS IN A NEW ORDER The heads of independent governments are, in relation to one another, in an ungoverned situation because, as "civilized" as many of them are, they do not have a common superior on earth with au- thority to judge between them in cases of disagreement. This may seem to us more evident when President John Kennedy met with Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, but that is only because there was evi- dence of hostility and danger when those two met. It is as true that they are in an ungoverned situation when President Gerald Ford meets with President Valery Giscard d'Estaing or Prime Minister James Callaghan, despite the warm cordiality, because there is no superior they have consented to have authority to settle controversies that might arise between them. The absence of government between heads of sovereign govern- ments is one vicarious experience we all have of nongovernment, which, I remind you, is important to understand if we wish to under- stand what the Declaration means by government. But we not only know, distantly, others who live in an ungoverned situation, we all have direct experience of it ourselves. All of us have had an experience like walking on a dark and deserted street, with no homes nearby or other people around and no way of calling the police in time in case we need them, when a figure suddenly approaches out of the distance. This is a no-government situation because there will be no superior with authority to act in time in case of controversy. I assume that everyone has, at some time, been in a situation like this~perhapsnot with a stranger but with someone he knew or thought he knew well; perhaps not on a street but in some remote and isolated place in the country; perhaps not even in the dark but in bright and broad daylight; nevertheless, where he felt himself outside the reach of the protection of authority. If I am right that this is part of the experience of all of us, then no one is without experience of no-government; everyone knows directly what it is like to be among other persons without government. In that ungoverned situation, we feel danger, uncertainty, inse- curity, whether it is warranted or not, because without the protection of authority, force is too likely to be used by others against us without our consent, without respect for our rights. When force is used without right or authority, a kind of war is made on us, to injure or kill or at least to coerce us. The ungoverned situation need not be a coercive situation, depending on who the persons are and what the conditions of their being together are, but it is plain that an un- governed situation becomes coercive more easily than a governed situation-or, to put it more plainly, a bully is more likely to try to coerce someone when the police are not there. A RIGHT OF REVOLUTION? Under government the coercive activity of the A1 Capone gang, for example, can and does occur, but there is at least a prospect of bringing it to an end. In an ungoverned situation such coercion is likely to end only in total surrender or death. The ungoverned situa- tion is very unsafe, very insecure, very inconvenient, and not to be endured, even if we assume that just about everyone, but not every- one, is by nature inclined to be cooperative and peaceable. Natural Rights The assumption of the Declaration is that every human being is born with natural rights that are not bestowed by any human effort. The Creator, or nature's God, endows us with rights, equally. These rights are the starting point of government, but they are not political rights. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are divine or natural gifts, not in the capacity of any political or governmental institution to bestow. We start life, every one of us, according to the Declaration, with the right to life, with the liberty to protect and enhance that life, and with the right to make the best of that life. Governments are instituted by men; rights are not. The purpose of government is to secure these rights. To do that, government must have powers to act, for example, to thwart the nonpolitical, coercive powers of criminals. Not all power is political. The powers of gangsters over victims, of parents over children, of one spouse over another, of a professor over students, of a religious leader over followers, of a boss over employees, or of a slave owner over slaves differ among themselves, and all differ from political power in many ways, although similarities make it difficult, sometimes, to distinguish them from one another. Political powers derive from the consent of the people. In an ungoverned situation, because everyone has a right to life and the liberty to protect it, everyone has the right to resist coercion or force in the absence of authority. That means that you can fight someone who attacks you and even kill him, if you must, to save yourself from injury or death.