Back in early September, we asked the question “Do Not Comply. Is it Just a Hashtag or Is It a Rallying Cry?” At that time, many news sources were questioning whether more catastrophic events were being planned to enable “the powers that be” to have more lockdowns. We wondered if the rising popularity of #donotcomply was people simply posting an opinion or issuing a call to action.
We haven’t heard as much in recent months about lockdowns but that doesn’t mean that “the powers that be” have abandoned the thought of another pandemic or other emergency “requiring” a lockdown. Whether of not this tool of compliance is imminent, it behooves us all to be prepared (yes, I was a Boy Scout) for that eventuality.
Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, enumerates natural rights that are ours whether the government recognizes them or not. On that basis, we in the United States can constitutionally maintain our right to free speech, regardless of what the civil government may do, even when that involves “not complying.”
The notion of “not complying” also has religious overtones. Many have given little thought to what “not complying” means Biblically. We will specifically examine the Biblical imperatives in Part 2, but here in Part 1 we will do a survey of historical and contemporary examples of righteous men and women “not complying.”
The United States is a Constitutional Republic
The Founders established the United States as a Constitutional Republic (and emphatically not as a democracy). That means that we are ruled by established laws, first the Constitution (as Amended) and then by constitutional Federal, State and local laws. Foundational to it all are the rights we have as people created by God, with the primary purpose of civil government being to ensure that those rights are not violated.
In our post A Constitutional Republic (Part 1), we pointed out that as stated in the Declaration of Independence, our constitutional republic starts with the premise that
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The People have rights based solely on their being created by God. While the People have rights under God, the Declaration states that
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
But what if our government, or any government, violates our natural rights or our constitutional rights? Is it our right, even our obligation, to “not comply?” Our own Declaration of Independence states:
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, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. (Emphasis added)
The Founders declared that the Colonies had come to just such a time in which exercising their right to “alter or abolish” the form of government was necessitated by the excesses of British rule. Since all of the principles in the Declaration are still true, we also would be justified as they were to “alter or abolish” our current government if it reaches the point where it “becomes destructive of these ends.” We pray that time doesn’t come so we continue to exercise our 1st Amendment rights to practice our religion and our freedoms of speech, press, assembly and redress of grievances to ensure that it doesn’t.
Historical Examples
Nazi Holocaust
Jews were systematically hunted down by the National Socialist German Workers' Party,1 led by Adolph Hitler, both in Germany and in the countries occupied during the Holocaust.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Pastor and an opponent of the anti-Semitic policies of the National Socialists from the beginning of their rise to power. He was a leading spokesman for the Confessing Church movement that developed during the 1930s in opposition to Hitler’s attempts to align the church with Nazi politics. Bonhoeffer was actively involved in the resistance movement and was involved in an unsuccessful conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. He was executed in 1945.
Martin Niemoller was another German Pastor who opposed Nazi control of the churches and was also one of the founders of the Confessing Church movement. For his opposition to the Nazis, he was imprisoned in concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. Niemoller is famous for penning the poem
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.2
Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish businessman in Budapest and Oskar Schindler a German businessman in German occupied Poland. Wallenburg and Schindler are each credited with saving thousands of Jews from extermination.
Many other individuals, including Corrie ten Boom’s family, also hid Jews in their houses at the risk of their own lives. Israel’s Holocaust Memorial has recognized almost 27,000 people who bravely chose to risk their lives to save Jews, designating them as “Righteous among the Nations.”
Tiananmen Square
In Communist China there were student-led protests in 1989 calling for democracy, free speech and a free press. Eventually tens of thousands of people joined the students in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The protests began in April and were ended in a deadly crackdown known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4 and 5, 1989. The spirit of the protest was captured in the photograph above, in which a solitary protester stood his ground in the face of CCP tanks. This protester was never publicly identified and is known to history only as “Tank Man.”
The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a prominent Soviet dissident who was an outspoken critic of communism. In 1945 he was arrested for criticizing Stalin and spent eight years in a labor camp. Solzhenitsyn was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and exiled to the West in 1974 after his story of the Soviet prison system, Gulag Archipelago, was first published in Paris in 1973.
Contemporary US Examples
There have been many movements in the US over the past 60 years that involved people standing against the culture and civil government, calling attention to problems that needed solutions. Here are just a few.
The Civil Rights movement
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s fought against racial segregation and discrimination in the United States, particularly in Southern States. In 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Her arrest for civil disobedience helped inspire the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the eventual Supreme Court ruling that segregation in public busses was unconstitutional. Black students in Southern States demanded to be admitted to white schools and the resulting Brown v Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court determined that school segregation was unconstitutional. Still, Federal troops had to be sent to Arkansas to allow nine Black students to attend Little Rock High School. There were sit-ins at lunch counters, marches, freedom rides and voter registration drives, sometimes opposed by local law enforcement who loosed dogs and fire hoses on protesters.
Operation Rescue
Operation Rescue was founded in 1986 by Randall Terry. He utilized the sit-in tactics of the civil rights movement to call attention to abortion by peacefully blockading the entrances to abortion clinics. Participants in Operation Rescue were generally arrested for trespassing, as in the earlier sit-ins of the civil rights and anti-war movements.
Pastors who kept churches open during Covid
During the Covid lockdowns in 2020-22, while most churches moved to online services with varying degrees of success, a small number of Pastors dared to keep their churches and ministries open in opposition to lockdown orders. Some of these Pastors were arrested, some multiple times, and their churches fined. Since that time, some of these churches and pastors have won lawsuits against civil government overreach in shutting down their churches, most notably in a 2021 Supreme Court case that ruled against the State of California for enforcing more stringent rules on churches than other institutions.
There is a long history of righteous individuals and organizations standing against tyranny and unrighteousness through non-compliance, utilizing the techniques of nonviolent or passive resistance. Most notably in the American Revolution, some noncompliance with tyranny required active armed resistance. In each case, the decision to be noncompliant was based on the moral imperative to resist tyranny or immorality.
We must each weigh the cost of compliance against the cost of noncompliance, particularly the moral costs. Sometimes the cost to our soul for compliance is greater than the penalties for noncompliance. We will be wise if we decide now, before the moment of crisis comes, what “hill is worth dying on.” We pray our decisions remain in the realm of metaphor, but who is to say what the future may hold?
Look for Part 2, discussing the Biblical imperatives, coming soon.
Fascism can be either far right or far left. Hitler’s National Socialists, as the adjective “socialist” suggests, were far left fascists. The Leftstream media is eager to brand all fascists as far right so if you look this up on Wikipedia (a very Leftstream media source) you will see the Nazis labeled as far right fascists. Wikipedia can be useful for some research purposes, as can all Leftstream media, as long as you are aware of their bias.
There are several different versions of this poem, each using different combinations of communists, socialists, trade unionists, Catholics and Jews. The same meaning is clear in each variation. This version was take from the Wikipedia article on Martin Niemoller.
Great review of history and resistance. Seems the ones you reference as resisting tend to be vindicated by history as being correct.
Great article Jeff! I will be referencing some of what you said for my next Republican Club meeting 😃