No to Revolutionary Government

“We must obey God rather than men” (Acts  5:29)

It is very worrying that the idea of Revolutionary Government is being floated around – as a joke, as an option, and even as a threat.

All elected officials, including the highest elected official – the President – are elected under the constitution and they have sworn to protect and promote the constitution. The Revolutionary Government is not within the constitution. It fact, it is a rule outside of the bounds of the constitution. It is therefore an immoral rule, as it is imposed forcibly. It is a rule without mandate. It is usurpation of power. As such it has no binding power except force or violence. No one is morally obliged to obey it.

Not even the supposedly “will of the people” can give it mandate, as the “will of the people” is given parameters and meaning by the constitution.

The supposed destabilization of the state does not warrant a revolutionary government. The constitution has mechanisms to deal with threats to the state, with necessary safeguards to curb abuse, and the revolutionary government is not one of them.

If the government has plans, and even allegedly good ones, to pursue for the people, it should be within the parameters of the constitution. The end does not justify the means. No good should be pursued by bad means; a revolutionary government is a bad means because it is dictatorial and very much open to abuse because there is no check and balance mechanisms to guide it, except the whim of the one in power.

Let us not forget the wise observation of Sir John Dalberg-Action: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.” We not only have observed this. We have experienced it in our recent history. Let us not be complacent. Let us not be forgetful. Let us always be vigilant. The prophet Isaiah already warned us of “those who call evil good, and good evil, who change darkness to light, and light into darkness.” (Is 5:20) Let us be one in denouncing evil schemes, and in our present situation Revolutionary Government is one of them!