"Legitimate political discourse?"

[Dill]

(02-08-2022, 01:23 AM)Tiger Teeth Wrote: RNC calls January 6th..."legitimate political discourse."  Interested on conservatives point of view?

C'mon RNC, you guys.  They wanted to drag Mike Pence through the streets.

Warning, language.

But is this "legitimate?"  I challenge all reading to watch the 2nd video to it's entirety, and then please define "legitimate political discouse" under the Republican definition. 

Good thread topic, Tiger.

LOL I am willing to bet that the RNC members who worded their censure would offer a definition we'd both find acceptable--independently of application to this case.  And I would cast this a GOP, not a "conservative" issue. A lot of real conservatives have left the party or refused to endorse Trump. Notice the pushback in the Senate from Romney and McConnell. 

There is an interesting theoretical issue here--how do we decide when it is legitimate to resist government violently, or over throw it? If Biden had actually stolen the election, then it would be hard to argue that the protestors, even the violent ones, were behaving illegitimately. I'd sure feel like overthrowing the government if Trump's coup had worked.

Our Founders set a precedent when they founded a government based on the notion of popular sovereignty, and the right of the people to change a government which wasn't working, doing their wishes. The problem has always been that in US, so many individuals and groups then decide they have a right to secede or overthrow the government whenever there is policy or political tendency they don't like.

The true father of US contractual government, John Locke, devoted the final chapter of his Second Treatise to explain why, under contract government and even if the people are "sovereign," they can't just decide to undo the contract whenever they don't like something. Government was created in the first place to defend against the kind of anarchy represented by, say, some Michigan militia.