The Battle of Athens, TN and Other Rebellions Against Government

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"... whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence. ... Power then devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society." John Locke, English philosopher and political theorist. Considered the ideological progenitor of the American Revolution and who, by far, was the most often non-biblical writer quoted by the Founding Fathers of the USA. The Battle of Athens, Tennessee. GIs in Tennessee came home to find that a political machine had taken over their county. What they did about it astounded the nation. http://www.americanheritage.com/content/battle-athens Little known story out of Athens, TN where citizens take it upon themselves to oust a corrupt political gang from power. Take the time to read this, and/or view the 13 minute video reenactment of this astounding bit of history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=U5ut6yPrObw The Battle of Athens, TN is not the only time citizens rebelled against the government. http://www.ushistory.org/us/15a.asp In Shays' Rebellion in 1786, small farmers and shop owners in western Massachusetts, armed with muskets and angry that the courts were foreclosing on their property to satisfy their debts, forcibly closed the courts and threatened to march on Boston. In the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, farmers in Pennsylvania and Kentucky took up muskets and threatened government officials who were charged with collecting taxes on whiskey. Madison called Shays' Rebellion treason. Yet he is quoted as saying; “Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions. ” The governor of Massachusetts raised an army to crush the rebellion, an action endorsed by George Washington, Samuel Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and John Marshall. And yet, G. Washington said this; "The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government . . ." and Samuel Adams said this; "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" And Ben Franklin said this; "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." Eight years later, during the Whiskey Rebellion, George Washington said that permitting citizens to take up arms against the government would bring an "end to our Constitution and laws," and he personally led troops to extinguish the rebellion. How do we reconile the words and the actions of George Washington? Thomas Jefferson on the people's right to rebel: [b]"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty . . . And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."[/b] And Abraham Lincoln said this; "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." So, what do YOU think? Is it a God given natural right for men to rebel against their government if it becomes tyrannical and does not abide by its own rules? Or is it treason to rise up against the government AFTER exhausting all other avenues for redress of grievances?