Reply #13: I beleive that your thinking on this matter fails on several levels...

[Iowa]

"Who gets to decide which laws can be ignored?"

Your question is based on a false premise - the premise that someone must always "decide" and the masses must always follow. In a free society, conscience and humanity must sometimes trump rules. The thing is, liberty can be messy. It's not something that lends itself to being tied up into a neat, tidy, rigid set of rules. There was a time when it was illegal to hide escaped slaves. Who gets to decide whether such laws can be ignored? I do. You do. We all do. That almost goes without saying; it's one of the key things that separates liberals from conservatives.

"When the thugs regain control, do we sit by when they decide to ignore some laws."

Of course not. Once again, you appear to be operating from a false premise. You're presuming that if people of conscience ignore monstrous laws, they must therefore "sit by" and tolerate thugs who ignore laws that exist for the common good... tit-for-tat. But that simply isn't the case. Your thinking on this seems to be guided by a tendency to prefer the neatness of order, simplicity, and rules, which can sometimes lead to faulty conclusions.

"Our Founders... provided the means to undo bad laws."

True, but in an effort to mold this issue into your way of thinking, you're taking one fact and running too far with it. You're suggesting that because the founders provided the means to undo bad laws, it follows that all laws, no matter how reprehensible, must be tolerated unless repealed by the government. The founders would have rejected that type of thinking. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all". The founders would have found your thinking on this to be directly opposed to their own.