Leo said:
There is a point, certainly, where a government clearly does not rule by the consent of the governed, and at that point, the government no longer has the claims upon individual citizens that a democratic government does.
What point is that Leo? It's a thorny question, I know, to ask on a Monday morn, but please indulge my desire to know.
That is where a right to revolution kicks in.
"Rights" is a word with which I have lots of trouble. As it appears to work in practice, a right is an "allowance" in the stictest sense of the word: what someone else allows another to have. Rights can be made constitutional and thereby given an air of permanence, but they can still be modified, superseded, or abolished. A right is granted to a person or class of persons or people in general by those who also have the power to take it away. It can be granted out of fear for or fear of those who don't have a particular right or rights, but it is always granted by someone else, who may not feel it is in his/her/their best interests or even the best interests of the one petitioning for rights. If there is such a thing as a "right to revolution," it exists entirely within the mind of the petitioner for that "right", who then has to convince others that this "right" should be exercised while all the while those who insist there is no need for this "right" (either innocently or with an ulterior motive) loudly proclaim the insanity and/or diabolism of the petitioner (Ohh . . . . There's a fantastic quote from the preface to Joanna Russ' The Female Man that speaks exactly to what I am saying. I wish I could remember it!) and the benefits/beauty of the present. I'm all for peaceful and democratic (radical) changes to societies/governments, but to assume that it can come about simply by obeying what the majority says and tacking on a rider for minority rights is, to my mind, only a flea's-step above "micro-resistance" techniques in efficacy. Even if the present First-World Governments were informed by Marxism, I still would be leery of "majority right."
I will grant you that democracy is great for preventing one individual from running roughshod over people for his/her own benefit (this is the historical milieu it grew out of), but it does nothing to prevent a class of people from running roughshod over other classes or individuals.
Todd