Personally, I don't think anyone in their right mind wants a civil war. It would bring death, destruction, chaos, and untold amounts of pain to our country. I think we all have varying complaints of varying levels of severity of varying levels of validity about what our "freedoms" are and how they're being denied/protected/aided/trampled. I have yet to see anything that would make me take up arms against the government, but others on here have differing tolerance levels.
I'm not naive enough to say that violence never solves anything. However, I think if we ever have the choice, non-violence can effect as much or more change in its own way than violence can, and with farther-reaching consequences and impacts. There are times, though, "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Also, "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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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 right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." (In fact, it's enlightening to read the reasons listed in the Declaration given for throwing off George III and England. Some of them sound downright familiar. *ahem, government shutdown*
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html)
As to an SOP, I think we're missing an important piece of it: Leaders whom we can respect. While I respect Ken's choice to go and support this, I don't think people like Bundy, or some of the rabble rousers like Beck, are people that a majority of folks would respect and follow. I was (and to some extent still am) a huge fan of what President Obama has written and said about our country. I am very disappointed in his actions, and before his second term (when we could no longer blame everything on Bush
) I might have followed him if he thought there was reason. Speakers like him who are respectable, earnest, well-spoken, thoughtful, and whose lives reflect their stated values are the sorts of people that would have to be involved before I'd even consider taking up arms, assuming I believed in the cause in the first place, of course.
