How to Overthrow the Government

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Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction. There is no mechanism in existing law that states that allows for some kinds of revolution to be legal. It should be pointed out that many of the founders writings for why they included the 2nd Amendment were more to make the government aware of what could happen if they go too far.

As Pauline Maier has noted in her study From Resistance to Revolution, "private individuals were forbidden to take force against their rulers either for malice or because of private injuries". In political philosophy, the right of revolution (or right of rebellion) is the right or duty of a people to "alter or abolish" a government that acts against their common interests or threatens the safety of the people without justifiable cause. In second and third paragraphs, word “such” was inserted after “any” and before “government”, and words “in the United States” which followed “government” were omitted.American revolutionaries accused George III of breaching his implied duty of protection under that contract, thereby releasing the people in the colonies from their allegiance. It is pretty much never legal to engage in a revolution against the currently established government.

Fritz, in American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War, describes a duality in American views on preconditions to the right of revolution: "Some of the first state constitutions included 'alter or abolish' provisions that mirrored the traditional right of revolution" in that they required dire preconditions to its exercise. S. envoy to Hawaii (Native spelling: Hawai'i), led a coup d'état that ousted the Hawaiian monarch Queen Liliʻuokalani from power.For Locke, these governments undid themselves by standing in the way of a citizen's right to property.