We owe them no respect or obediance:
There used to be a social contract requiring that our government treat us all equally within the scope of the Constitution and defend us, and in return we would recognize the legitimacy of its laws and defend it when in need. But that contract has been breached. We are not all equal before the law. Our constitutional rights are not being upheld. We are not being defended – hell, we normals get blamed every time some Seventh Century savage goes on a kill spree. Yet we’re still supposed to keep going along as if everything is cool, obeying the law, subsidizing the elite with our taxes, taking their abuse. We’ve been evicted by the landlord but he still wants us to pay him rent.
Now it seems we actually have a new social contract – do what we say and don’t resist, and in return we’ll abuse you, lie about you, take your money, and look down upon you in contempt. What a bargain!
It’s not a social contract anymore – American society today is a suicide pact we never agreed to and yet we’re expected to go first.
I say “No.”
We owe them nothing – not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. Nothing.
They have sown the wind. It’s time for a new declaration of independence from these would-be tyrants.
[Update a few minutes later]
The origins of the Declaration of Independence:
Rutherford cautioned that a single bad act by a ruler did not justify revolution. Only if the ruler were systematically destroying the fundamental structure of society would the tremendous step of revolution be necessary. The 1776 American Declaration of Independence echoed Rutherford’s belief, explaining that “Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient cause. . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their [the people’s] right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.” The Declaration then provided a litany of King George’s abuses which proved the King’s intent to destroy civil society: “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”
Although not explicitly religious, the Declaration made a covenantal argument, that the king was violating his contractual duties that the people had entrusted him to perform: “that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.”
Rutherford argued that the people must address government abuses through methods that create the lowest level of disruption that was practically possible. Supplication was the first choice, flight the second option and use of force the last resort.
Similarly, the Declaration of Independence explained that the Americans had repeatedly asked the British for redress of their grievances and been met with constant rebuff. Fleeing to another country was not a realistic option for the entire American people. Accordingly, violent revolution was justified.
We’re not as far from that point as I wish we were. The irrational appeal of Trump is sadly a step along that road and a consequence of the disdain of the political class, in both parties.
[Update a while later]
Why the world is rebelling against “experts.”
Because they don’t know WTF they’re doing, and lie to us.
[Update a while later]
Related: A power play by the AAAS:
This statement is a blatant misuse of scientific authority to advocate for specific socioeconomic policies. National security and economics (specifically called out in the letter) is well outside the wheelhouse of all of these organizations. Note the American Economics Association is not among the signatories; according to an email from Ross McKitrick, the constitution of the AEA forbids issuing such statements. In fact, climate science is well outside the wheelhouse of most of these organizations (what the heck is with the statisticians and mathematicians in signing this?)
The link between adverse impacts such as more wildfires, ecosystem changes, extreme weather events etc. and their mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas emissions hinges on detecting unusual events for at least the past century and then actually attributing them to human caused warming. This is highly uncertain territory – even within the overconfident world of the IPCC. And the majority of the signatories to this letter have no expertise in the detection and attribution of human caused climate change.
The signatories whose membership has some expertise on the detection and attribution of climate change are only a few: American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Geological Society of America. The rest are professional societies who are not involved with the physics of climate but explicitly profit from the alarm.
Not enough opportunities for graft when you can’t irrationally frighten the sheep.