The anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is a good time to renew our committment to the principles expressed in that document. The essence is that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." That moral insight was in the air at the time. We were fortunate to have a group of leaders in our colonies who believed that principle strongly enough to risk their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
Many Americans today have a hard time understanding that kind of moral reasoning. They will say "To do what's right you need only obey the law." If our founders had reasoned that way we would still belong to England.
What we said in 1776 was that law was important; but, if it's a bad law, it was up to us to change it. The king is only the king if those he governs consent to his authority. Their judgment and that of the average citizen was that the king had abused his authority and that they would no longer consent to be governed by him.
In our own lives there are times when, to do the right thing, we must go beyond the law and/or work to have the law changed. One of the best examples of this in the lifetime of many of us was the Civil Rights Movement. We disobeyed laws that enshrined racial segregation and managed to get those laws changed.
Ours is a government that derives its just powers "from the consent of the governed."
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