US Sedition Act

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Sun Nov 11 15:48:17 PST 2001


Of course it makes sense to speak of rights that are not recognized and even explicitly condemned in law. That is e.g. just what the Declaration of Independence did. And the right of a subject people to resist occupation has been asserted at the UN as a matter of international law -- a right rarely countenanced in the laws of the occupier. --CGE

From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
> >
> > "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
> > inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing
> > Government,
> > they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or
> > their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
> > --A. Lincoln, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
>
> Nice try, C.G., and lofty political rhetoric, but not law. In fact,
> Lincoln was immediately to put ther full weight of the United States
> against some people who triedto exercise that "right," which he always
> denied existed in law. It is illegal under a whole bunch of laws to
> actively try to overthrow the government, as opposed to abstractly
> advocate its overthrow. jks



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