Revolution on the Ground

By Steven Greffenius

Citizens who want to replace their government have several options. The standard method is to elect new representatives and a new president. For a long time we have assumed that electorally driven processes will work, but we have discovered they do not.
Another option is a people's movement to force removal of the government. That implies a traditional revolution, often violent, seldom orderly. Few want to follow that course: it's difficult, it is easily branded illegal, and it would not work in this country.

A third option is to use constitutional means to shift responsibility from institutions that function poorly to institutions that function well, from institutions that degrade liberty to institutions that preserve it. This path of change would ensure that an irresponsible national government cannot operate with its former reach. The problem with this path is that change resistant institutions can resume their old ways after citizens go home. Another difficulty is that constitutional changes take a long time - time that partisans of existing institutions can use to keep the national government strong.

That brings us to a fourth option that complements the third: ignore the national government and replace it with alternate, regionally based institutions of governance. Return governance to the vision of democracy in Tocqueville's Democracy in America, where citizens almost universally participate in their local institutions. The so-called powers that be in Washington were just not that important: in particular, people didn't send their money there. The problem with this vision is that it could and perhaps ought to lead to separate, autonomous regions. Citizens are loyal to their country, and many would not want to see it break up.

Revolution on the Ground considers the problems and prospects associated with the third and fourth options, identified here with a constitutional convention and civil resistance. It explains why these plans are the most practicable means among those available. Lastly, it explains why these two methods, despite their difficulties, are most likely to work.
So let's start exploring. Remember as we travel that a country and a government are not the same thing. Yes, citizens of a democratic republic are responsible for their governing institutions and the quality of their leadership. Still, just as the Marine who stands guard during the midnight watch is not responsible for an illegal war or a surprise attack, busy citizens betrayed by their leaders are not to blame when their leaders destroy democracy. All they can do is resist. They must resist, and remember who betrayed whom. To save their country, they must alter or abolish their government.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Greffenius
• Release date: May 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466142480

Steven Greffenius

I was born in Minneapolis in 1954; grew up in Valley City, North Dakota; graduated high school in Des Moines, class of 1972; graduated from Reed College in 1976 with a bachelor’s in history; married Leslie Olin from Boston in 1979; served as gunnery and electronics material officer on the USS KIRK based in Yokosuka, Japan, until 1982; earned a doctorate in political science from the University of Iowa in 1987; and taught politics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in Nanjing, China, and Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Currently I’m a technical editor at Conexant Systems in Waltham, Massachusetts. My wife and I have a son who lives in Washington DC, and a daughter in junior high school. We live in a great house in Westwood, Massachusetts, southwest of Boston.

Book preview

Revolution on the Ground

Steven Greffenius

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved.

Cover illustration:

Map

by Jasper Johns

Chapter 1: Courage to Start

Why is cross the Rubicon such a memorable phrase in the West’s political vocabulary? Julius Caesar stood with his troops on one side of a river, and decided to go to the other side. What’s so memorable about that?

Caesar took a calculated risk that worked out for him, if you don’t count the assassination that occurred about fifteen years later. He decided to enter a civil conflict on his own behalf. He couldn’t know when he made his decision how it would come out. He just knew that he had a fair chance of success, however his idea of success evolved during the conflict that followed.

Our country, and especially leaders of people who oppose its government, face a similar type of risk right now. If we act to alter or abolish our government, we can’t know the outcome. We have to calculate our chances of success as we go. We know that our government has reached a sufficient point of moral weakness that the chances of success are good. It has depleted its moral authority. It acts out of fear. Its leadership is self-absorbed and touchy. I carries too much debt. It dissipates its energy in failing enterprises. Most telling, it cannot accomplish even what it sets out to accomplish, let alone what it ought to accomplish.

Any amount of doubt in a project so big makes us want to stay with familiar institutions. If we don’t cross the river now, though, the chance is lost. We won’t be able to reestablish democratic forms of governance if we linger and wait for a better time. We have already travelled far down the road toward serfdom, and no serf ever felt free. If we turn off this well travelled road and explore the unmapped territory on the other side of the river, we have a chance to restore liberty under constitutional forms of government. If we continue our current progress, we’ll have to accept chains that hobble our feet, and miseries that no free people ever had to bear.

* * *

Citizens in the United States who think seriously about revolutionary reform return to John Locke and Thomas Jefferson for guidance. Their insights about governmental authority guided our nation’s founding. Their philosophies of democratic politics guide our nation still. If we want to explain to ourselves why we need a revolution to replace our government, we’ll find reasons in their arguments about what justifies governmental authority and what dissolves it.

The first thing to keep in mind is that changing a government is not easy. It’s harder than changing a tire on your car, a task that looks hard but is actually not so difficult if you have the right tools. For a revolution, a lot of people have to want it to happen, and you have to make your own tools as you go. Most delicate is that governments don’t normally relinquish their power without a hard fight. They have a lot to lose. If the government did not have so much power to lose, it would not require replacement. So here are some cautions before you read further in this book.

First: don’t try to replace a government that most people think is legitimate. It makes people angry, even angrier than you are. Even if most people think the government is illegitimate, you know you’ll provoke power holders and others who benefit from the way things are. No government folds up its tent and moves on voluntarily. Any government willing to do that would be too good to replace.

Second: nihilists, radical anarchists, soldiers of fortune and others with a reputation for trigger happiness and destruction should stop here. Most people like to have a government. They don’t like violence. They want security for their families. The object is to replace an illegitimate government without a war or other kinds of wanton violence. Governments founded by revolutionaries who rely on armed force have a thin claim to allegiance. Governments with a sound legal foundation have a more enduring claim, and therefore more opportunities to fulfill government’s proper roles.

Third: to alter or abolish your government is not to overthrow it. Change for the good is a process governed by reason. Overthrow suggests throwing over a sofa with people sitting in it. You have unhappy people with no place to sit. What you want is a new sofa that serves people’s needs, while you remove the old one in a truck. That process of replacement requires some planning. Change of any kind can be unsettling, so our preferences tend to gradual, incremental change. When change is required, we have a right to demand it. More than that: when government dissolves its authority, we must replace it. Our citizenship obliges us to act.

A preference for orderly change means we anticipate a familiar future. We want change to occur according to predictable processes. Unpredictable change causes confusion, and confusion only aids opportunists. If revolutionary change does come, it can happen in several ways – including violent ones. We should be ready. We should be ready to direct this explosion of energy toward constructive ends. If the explosion is only destructive, we’ll have missed an irretrievable chance to build better institutions that are young, resilient, responsive and durable.

With these thoughts in place, we’re ready to examine problems of revolutionary reform and organized, civil resistance to restore democratic self-government.

Chapter 2: Options for Citizens Who Want to Replace Their Government

Citizens who want to replace their government have several options. The standard method is to elect new representatives and a new president. For a long time we have assumed that electorally driven processes will work, but we have discovered they do not.

Another option is a people’s movement to force removal of the government. That implies a traditional revolution, often violent, seldom orderly. Few want to follow that course: it’s difficult, it is easily branded illegal, and it would not work in this country.

A third option is to use constitutional means to shift responsibility from institutions that function poorly to institutions that function well, from institutions that degrade liberty to institutions that preserve it. This path of change would ensure that an irresponsible national government cannot operate with its former reach. The problem with this path is that change resistant institutions can resume their old ways after citizens go home. Another difficulty is that constitutional changes take a long time – time that partisans of existing institutions can use to keep the national government strong.

That brings us to a fourth option that complements the third: ignore the national government and replace it with alternate, regionally based institutions of governance. Return governance to the vision of democracy in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, where citizens almost universally participate in their local institutions. The so-called powers that be in Washington were just not that important: in particular, people didn’t send their money there. The problem with this vision is that it could and perhaps ought to lead to separate, autonomous regions. Citizens are loyal to their country, and many would not want to see it break up.

Revolution on the Ground considers the problems and prospects associated with the third and fourth options, identified here with a constitutional convention and civil resistance. It explains why these plans are the most practicable means among those available. Lastly, it explains why these two methods, despite their difficulties, are most likely to work.

So let’s start exploring. Remember as we travel that a country and a government are not the same thing. Yes, citizens of a democratic republic are responsible for their governing institutions and the quality of their leadership. Still, just as the Marine who stands guard during the midnight watch is not responsible for an illegal war or a surprise attack, busy citizens betrayed by their leaders are not to blame when their leaders destroy democracy. All they can do is resist. They must resist, and remember who betrayed whom. To save their country, they must alter or abolish their government.

Chapter 3: Obligation to Resist

Large numbers of people have reached these conclusions by varying paths:

The national government’s legislature has lost its ability to function effectively.

The national government has