Concomitant with the extremely strong moral and legal position of legitimate governments, as established above, there is the right granted by natural law of legitimate resistance to a tyrant. In the Aristotelian and Thomistic interpretation of the natural law, a tyrant is one who rules unjustly in his own interest or in the interest of a section of the people against the interests of the rest of the population (i.e., a dictatorship of the proletariat against the interests of the property-owning portion of the nation or liberal capitalism against Christ’s poor.) Tyranny has nothing to do with the form of government. A monarch may be absolute and not a tyrant if he rules for the benefit of his subjects and not for his personal enrichment. The Papacy is an excellent example of this; the Pope is an absolute monarch in that he possesses the full plentitude of power – executive, legislative, and judicial – over the Roman Catholic Church. Yet, he is not a tyrant as he rules for the benefit of the faithful and personally lives an extremely modest and exemplary life – far more worthy than the lifestyle usually found in the modern American Congressman or European parliamentarian.

One, therefore, has to distinguish very carefully between revolution, which is always illegitimate, and the legitimate right of resistance to a tyrant. The importance of understanding the distinction between the two cannot be underestimated in this day and age that is so besought with terrorism and violent revolution in so many places.

In order to understand the far-reaching differences between the legitimate right of resistance and illegitimate revolution, it is necessary to have an understanding of the philosophy of the latter. Once the philosophy of revolution is understood, it can then be clearly distinguished from the legitimate right to resistance upon which a legitimate provisional government is founded. The doctrine of the legitimate right of resistance will be examined, including its preconditions, and the method of the establishment of a legitimate provisional government can then be ascertained and identified.

Illegitimacy of Revolution

Since the time of the 1789 French Revolution, the world has been infested with philosophies springing from the ideas of Rousseau. These have led to multiple violent revolutions throughout the world and to the gangrene of terrorism in our own age. It is as if a floodgate of violence was unleashed upon the world by that primordial rebel who likened himself unto God.

The philosophies giving rise to the French and all subsequent revolutions have been termed by both their adherents and opponents as “progress,” “liberalism,” “progressivism,” and “modern civilization” as opposed to the ideals of the natural law upon which legitimate governments are based. We will, therefore, examine the philosophy of revolution on this basis, demonstrating how this philosophy forms the foundation for both illegitimate revolution and also terrorism. We will also demonstrate how the doctrines of natural law, the basis of international law, condemn revolution.

The Philosophy of Revolution

The idea of “progress” had its origin in the Encyclopedists of the French “enlightenment,” men of the ilk of Rousseau and Voltaire. To these liberal atheists, nothing exists except created matter. God and, of course, the Christian religion is the creature of human wishes and dreams or fears. God is “abolished” by science and materialism, which is concerned only with what “the eye can see and the hand can touch.” Thus, the world and the universe becomes anarchic in its order and nature. Consequently, man can do with the material world, whatever he pleases. Having “abolished” God, the devotees of progress likewise abolish the idea of a natural order, the natural law. They can thus do with the world, especially the social and moral world, whatever they like because they deny the transcendent personal God only in order to usurp God.

This attitude is what is known as “scientism” or progress – the worship of abstract science as a pseudo-religion. To its disciples, natural science constitutes the only valid source of knowledge and is alone capable of solving all human problems. Suffice to say, scientism completely rejects God and revealed religion as unfounded superstition. It is, thus, a competitive ideology, engaged in a sustained war on all prevailing creeds and institutions, be they Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. As a militant ideology, scientism constitutes what is known as secular or scientific humanism. The “dogmas” of this creed are as follows:

(1) The universe is self-existing and not created.

(2) Man is part of nature and has evolved as part of a continuous process.

(3) Modern science provides the only acceptable description of the universe.

(4) Modern science excludes any supernatural explanation of the universe or of human values.

(5) The end of man’s life is the complete realization of the human personality in this world.[1]

Therefore, progress is simply dialectical materialism – all reality is explainable as matter. Even the mind is only an outgrowth of matter. Moving in space and time, matter transforms itself by creating oppositions and by resolving them. Man, both ontologically and chronologically, is totally and exclusively a product of this process. He is directly bound up in his understanding and control of the dialectic of matter, especially as these are realized in social forces.[2]

As applied by the new governments, based on ideology of this progressive ideal from the French Revolution, a new “religion” of State Secularism is formed. Adherence to the philosophical tenets of rationalist liberalism is a kind of civil religion by Rousseau’s meaning. Supernatural faith is here simply denied. The Christian rules of morality and the divine law are publicly declared either a myth, irreconcilable with modern science or with the proletarian revolution, or they are said to be only a propaganda instrument of clerical arrogance and of political anti-democratic reaction. Consequently, social and political life are to be ruled without consideration of absolute Christian and divinely revealed law; but exclusively by the rules of political or social or even proletarian science.

It can easily be seen that such a “religion” or indifferentism, even of anti-Christian rationalist scientism, makes the state an instrument of the rationalist unbelievers of the intellectual ruling class and destroys the traditional religion of the still-Christian people. This new belief becomes the public religion of the state while the Christian faith or any other religion is declared to be exclusively and wholly a private affair of the citizen.[3]

Under the modern state produced by the Rousseauist doctrine (“dogma” in the eyes of its adherents) of popular sovereignty, progress substitutes a new paganism as the established religion in place of the Christian faith of the legitimate Christian monarchies. Secularism then becomes the de facto “religion” of the state and is propagated by the official institutions of the state, especially by the state-controlled schools:

. . . the new philosophical systems of utilitarianism, naturalism, and positivism impressed themselves upon educational philosophy. The purpose of education then becomes a secular humanism, i.e., antiquity plus nationalism but minus Christianity, or it becomes training for specific useful adaptations of the individual in a world controlled by economic wealth and technological civilization. In a world without a faith in things invisible, without a belief in eternal truth and unchangeable moral laws, everything becomes relative and instrumental. So become the educational institutions.[4]

Progress establishes a scientific secularism as the religion of the states replaces the old Christian monarchies established the Catholic and Protestant faiths. However, there is a subtle difference, as this is done under the supposed religious neutrality of the secular state. In reality, this “neutrality” becomes a weapon to promote the scientistic civil religion of progress:

The political authorities, under the pretense of neutrality, actually promote a naturalist educational philosophy or conceal behind the word “neutrality” a consistent anti-clerical educational policy, i.e., a policy which denies or contemptuously disparages the Christian truths as superstitions to be overcome by reason and science, and promotes a relativist morality and philosophy. A striking case is that of the educational policy in some Latin countries, especially in France of the Third Republic. Under these conditions any denial of freedom of education and any actual compulsion or economic pressure upon Christian parents to send their children to such state schools, must be considered a grave violation of the natural rights of the parents to determine the education of their children and a denial of the freedom of conscience.[5]

The scientific progress of the states, based on the 1789 French Revolution, uses the supposed religious neutrality in their form of government as a political weapon against all revealed religions on the ground that religion is the foe of freedom (individualism) or opium of the masses. Religion and the Church, based on the revealed and the natural law, are regarded as reactionary enemies of the secular ideals of progress. The political purpose of the religious “neutrality” of such states is thus the destruction of religion and religious institutions.

So the state claims absolute control over all education outside the family. The state destroys the Catholic schools, the independent universities under the Church. It forbids the religious teaching-orders to continue their schools though their members have qualified as teachers in examinations ordered by the general laws of the state. The property of the Church is confiscated and, in violation of the will of the donors, it is used for the promotion of the godless instruction of a non-religious civic morality in public schools. The cathedrals and other churches are declared national property and given to the Catholic people for use only. Tax privileges in accordance with general laws given to institutions of charitable, educational, and religious character, granted without any restrictions to associations conformed to the new “religion” of neutrality, are denied to Catholic institutions. The priest is even denied entrance into publicly owned hospitals to administer the last rites to a patient, however much the patient or his relatives may demand it.[6]

The effect of all of this is to irreparably undermine the Christian foundation of society, both nationally and internationally:

Furthermore, the elimination of Christian doctrine and Christian ethics must lead to the almost inevitable temptation to substitute for these either a nationalist or a merely humanitarian philosophy. The consequence will be that the common Christian supranational moral values disappear and narrow nationalism with all its separative forces destroys the common Christian inheritance and with it the basis for international cooperation and understanding; or mere naturalist humanitarianism, separating man from God, will fall into pitfalls of utilitarianism or an emotional relativist glorification of abstract freedom. All of these will lead to anarchy either by lack of moral strength or by an exaggeration of separative elements or by a reduction of man’s spiritual existence to the material values of the useful and the profitable. The spiritual crisis thus indicated and the spiritual problem which they vainly try to solve cannot be met by material, economic, or political remedies.[7]

The new pagan civic religion of agnostic scientism, produced by the idea of progress incarnate in the French Revolution, leads to a general skepticism on the part of the people and creates a cynical ridicule of the fiber of moral and civil virtues through which alone, in the last analysis, the state thrives. By proclaiming relativist agnosticism as the civil religion of the state based on the social contract theory, the state itself unwittingly destroys the moral basis of its authority over its citizens.

As has been demonstrated, the moral authority of all 1egitimate governments (monarchies and republics alike) is ultimately grounded in God through the natural law. The consequences of abandoning the natural law are very serious and corroding to civilization.

Intellectuals like Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Tillich and many others who have followed them have tried to create a godless society, a society free to create its own ethical system without the constraints of God-given mandates.

What can we expect if these leaders are able to advance their model for a system of ethics that has no need for God?

An interesting example may be the story of the medical profession in Germany during the Nazi regime. The medical profession is supposed to be the protector of human life. The Hippocratic Oath, that dates back to the Egyptians, states the highest standards of trust for those dedicating themselves to this honorable profession.

How did the medical profession in Germany become nothing more than an instrument of death in the hands of the Nazis? First, one’s view of the nature of man had to change from that of a spiritual being to that of a purely physical being of no universal value beyond what society places on the individual. Through years of assault upon traditional morals and biblical truths, the German people began to see mankind through the eyes of German philosophers like Nietzsche and Hiedigger. These men viewed humanity as strictly flesh and blood, different from the animals only in progression, not in basic nature. (3)

Once the German population in general, and the medical profession in particular, was sold on a collectivist-authoritarian way of life, everything was in place to use the medical profession to accomplish the purposes of the Third Reich.

The Nazi holocaust began with a subtle shift in attitude that judged the value of people based upon their cost/benefit ratio to the state. First, it started with sterilization and euthanasia of people with severe psychiatric illnesses. Soon all those with chronic illness were being exterminated. Before too long, all patients who had been sick for five years or more, or were medically unable to work and unlikely to recover were transported to killing centers; what started as “mercy killings” in rare cases of extreme mental illness soon expanded to mass extermination on an unprecedented scale. Before long all those who could not work and were medically evaluated as incapable of being rehabilitated were killed. (4)

The German medical profession then started using human body parts for medical research, and this led to the grisly “terminal human experiments,” in which live people were used in medical experiments.(5)

It all started with the idea that humans belong to society and the state. According to this view, if someone is a burden to society and the state, it is logical to conclude that their life was not a life worth living. From the first decision to put to death burdensome mental patients, a chain of events followed that ultimately led to the death of the majority of all the Jews in Europe, as well as millions of other “undesirables.”[8]

That is, these philosophies do not produce good, but they instead support and encourage the worst in humanity. Edmund Burke soberly declared:

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within [or inside a man], the more there is without [externally by force of arms]. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.[9]

This great man also declared that, “All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”[10]

Legitimate governments have the power to bind their subjects to obey their just laws under the pain of sin[11]. . . the ultimate sanction for all believers. Michael McCullough, a University of Miami professor and his colleagues, evaluated eight decades of research on religion that was conducted with people all over the world using various sciences, including neuroscience, economics, psychology, and sociology. His findings are “that religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts.”[12] As a direct result of their faith, “. . . religious people tend to have lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, less delinquency, better health behaviors, less depression, and longer lives.”[13] Among the more interesting conclusions that the research team had were the following:

A. Religious rituals, such as prayer and meditation, affect the parts of the human brain that are most important for self-regulation and self-control;

B. When people view their goals as “sacred,” they put more energy and effort into pursuing those goals; therefore, they are more effective at attaining them;

C. Religious lifestyles may contribute to self-control by providing people with clear standards for their behavior, by causing people to monitor their own behavior more closely, and by giving people the sense that God is watching their behavior;

D. The fact that religious people tend to be higher in self-control helps explain why religious people are less likely to misuse drugs and alcohol and experience problems with crime and delinquency.[14]

The conclusion is obvious; religion generally promotes higher rates of ethical, moral, and productive behavior. Robert Bork, a legal scholar, and former judge for the United States Court of Appeals in his Preface to Herbert Schlossberg’s book Idols for Destruction, wrote about “the borrowed capital” principle:

Some few years ago friends whose judgment I greatly respect argued that religion constitutes the only reliable basis for morality and that when religion loses its hold on a society, standards of morality will gradually crumble. I objected that there were many moral people who are not at all religious; my friends replied that such people are living on the moral capital left by generations that believed there is a God and that He makes demands on us. The prospect, they said, was that the remaining moral capital would dwindle and our society become less moral. The course of society and culture has been as they predicted. . . .[15]

The bottom line is:

. . . If we don’t believe we are created by God, but [are] simply highly evolved animals, and if we believe we have accountability only to society, then there is no end to the depths of depravity that we can go in our search to justify our actions. Corrosion of morals begins in microscopic proportions, but if not checked by a standard beyond ourselves, it will continue until the corrosion wipes away the very [fabric of our society as well as the] foundation of our [own personal] lives, and we find ourselves sinking [or drowning] in a sea or [the bottomless mire] of relativity.[16]

There can be no true liberty, no true morality, and no greatness or good life in a civilization that enshrines situational morality or relativism. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) in the 1800s said it well when he wrote about his discoveries and research on the amazing success of the United States. He said:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers - and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce – and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution – and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.[xvii]

Religion is not the opiate of the people. It is a boon and a great benefit to any people. Unfortunately, under the concept of progressive secularism, the moral authority of the state, based upon the authority of God, is simply denied, disparaged and actively vilified. The state, both implicitly and explicitly, denies that it rules “by the Grace of God.” Its authority rises no higher than social contract theory of popular sovereignty, which this study has demonstrated to be contrary to the natural law. Having denied God and all metaphysical realities, especially that of sin, the state simply has no basis of authority over its citizens other than physical force. It likewise has no moral authority to stop the spread of revolutionary sedition among its citizens. If revolutionary-inclined citizens can find a way to overcome, neutralize, or subvert the physical power of the state, there is no other reason why they should not proceed to overthrow it according to popular sovereignty.

Moreover, the 1789 social contract theory of popular sovereignty is particularly appealing to revolutionaries. If the original revolutionaries overthrew the legitimate government to establish a secular republic, why should not proletarian revolutionaries, acting in the name of the actual economic majority of the country, overthrow the secular republic and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat? There are certainly no moral considerations to stop them. The secular republic “abolished” those! Likewise, through its educational propaganda and allies in academia and the mass media, the secular republic destroyed or greatly diminished belief in the authority of God.

Although it may have done this, in part, as an attempt to undermine the moral claim of the unlawfully deposed government, it now finds itself estopped by its own theories. It can, one supposes, resort to physical force, but if the new proletarian revolutionaries are on the verge of overcoming that (possibly through terrorism), the secular republic simply has no moral authority for forbidding other citizens to join them.

The very concept of progress itself is on the side of the new revolutionaries. They will claim that their ideals are merely an advancement of the original 1789 ideals. Progress therefore demands the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the inevitable result of progress from feudalism through capitalism. The new revolutionaries also demand the implementation of a “scientific” economic system, state socialism. The egalitarianism implicit in progress must be economic (socialism) as well as the legal (abolition of titles).[18] Progressives everywhere must, therefore, rally to their banner and make the victory of “science” complete.

In summary, progress strips the state of the moral authority to prevent revolution and terrorist violence. The revolutionary, if he can find a way to overcome or subvert the physical authority of the state, has as much moral right to overthrow the state as did the original revolutionaries when they overthrew the legitimate government. Progress creates a moral right to revolt to carry the 1789 ideals to their logical conclusion. By its implementation of a civic religion based on scientific progress, the state has stripped itself of the moral authority to resist the new revolutionaries.

Liberalism

The essence of liberalism, which is individualism, the Liberte (license or licentiousness) of the French Revolution. This doctrine adopts an autonomous ethic repudiating the existence of a universal moral law and holds that the individual should be free to do anything he wishes, provided that he does not interfere with the equal freedom of others to do the same.[19] In our own time this translates into the popular clichés: “If it makes you feel good, do it” and “Do your own thing.” The problem with this is no society can long survive if the only rule is “anything goes.” If people are not taught to value right thinking, they will value wrong thinking. “. . . When you remove God from a society, you remove the basis for a moral code. . . .”[20]

This liberal theory of modern progressives was propagandized by the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Herbert Spencer. It provides a paradise for the unlimited moral autonomy of the individual, who may do anything he chooses and is free from the authority of natural and revealed law as imposed by the Monarch and religious leaders. The liberal theory of individualism, based on Rousseau’s idea of “man in the state of nature,” permits the individual to do anything he chooses in the name of Liberty so long as he permits every other man to do the same:

At first sight, the principle of equal individual liberty seems to authorize, or at least to permit, governmental repression of such crimes as theft, assault, and homicide. In reality it does nothing of the kind. For it is not based upon nor determined by objective considerations, such as the safety of society or the maximum amount of human welfare. Both Kant and Spencer express the principle of subjective terms. The will of the individual is to determine the limits and the application of the principle. “So act,” says Kant, “that the free use of thy liberty can coexist with the liberty of everyone else according to a universal law.” In Spencer’s foundation, “every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.” Therefore, each individual is the authoritative interpreter of the principle in his own regard. . . .

Admirers of Kant may question this interpretation of his principle. They may claim that the phrase, “according to a universal law,” is an objective limitation upon the subjective and arbitrary interpretation and exercise of individual liberty. The claim cannot be allowed. The “universal law” which Kant had in mind was not the moral law, nor the civil law, nor the divine law. It was simply the universal law of liberty. It could be violated only by the man who refused to grant to others the liberty that he claimed for himself. Such a man would be acting according to a particular, or exceptional, law of liberty. But the man who was willing to concede the same liberty to others could indulge in wholesale acts of injustice without violating the Kantian principle. Nor is it relevant to object that such conduct if universalized would destroy human society; for the Kantian principle does not recognize any objective standard or consequence as the determinant of individual freedom. Each individual is authorized to apply the principle according to his own desires and conceptions, unhindered by any consideration of social consequences.[21] (emphasis added)

Translated into governmental policy, Liberte permits open and notorious adultery, fornication, homosexual perversion, bestiality, abortion on demand, and the teaching and propagation of obscenity. The result of Liberte can be seen in the so-called “sexual revolution” of the past, which is still crippling marriage and family life today with loose morals, disloyalty, and the betrayal of sacred vows. Children must learn how to be habitually honest. Spouses must learn to be faithful and loyal to their mates. Society must promote morality for the good of all citizens. Margaret Thatcher wisely observed that:

No government at any level, or at any price, can afford, on the crime side, the police necessary to assure our safety unless the overwhelming majority of us are guided by an inner, personal code of morality. And you will not get that inner, personal code of morality unless children are brought up in a family – a family that gives them the affection they seek, that makes them feel they belong, that guides them to the future, and that will build continuity [and love for what is right and good] in future generations. . . .[22]

The family is extremely powerful. It can be a laboratory of greatness and cultivate beautiful and productive people. Alternatively it can be a hotbed for corruption, emotional pain, and anguish. Anything that builds and enriches marriage and family life enhances society, because it builds people and makes them greater human beings. As one great man said:

There never was a tonic that would cure more social ailments than a healthy, happy home. There never was a greater source of social stability than an affectionate and understanding family. There never was a better way of helping children to happiness than the close confidence of wise and loving and responsible parents.[23]

There are forces that fight the very thing that would create a better life for all. We live in a man-made desert of disbelief wherein God-given core values are discounted; crime, tragedies, and terror thrive. We are adrift in a morally and philosophically contaminated world – a world built on sand. In sum, Liberte is simply license to do anything and results in lawlessness. No government can flourish long without moral virtue. Virtue is the mortar that holds the bricks of state together. President George Washington said, “. . . True religion affords to government its surest support.”[24] No other basis can provide something sturdy enough for all generations to admire, look up to, and emulate.

However, liberalism denies or minimizes the authority of God over the human intellect through moral and ethical laws arrived at through the natural and divinely revealed law. It also completely denies or minimizes the authority of God over human conduct. The fundamental principle of liberalism is “absolute freedom of thought, speech, press, politics,” and freedom from religion. “It had its modern origin in the French Revolution and exalts the sovereignty of the people as unrestrained and absolute.”[25]

Pope Leo XIII gave an excellent definition of liberalism in his 1884 encyclical Humanum Genus; he condemned naturalism which is a form of liberalism:

“The Naturalists lay down that all men have the same rights and are in every respect of equal and like condition; that each one is naturally free; that no one has the right to command another; that it is an act of violence to require men to obey any authority other than that which is obtained from themselves. According to this, therefore, all things belong to the free people; power is held by the command of the people, so that whenever the popular will changes, rulers may be lawfully deposed; and the source of all rights and civil duties is either in the multitude, or in the governing authority, when the latter is constituted according to the latest doctrines. It is also held that the State should be without God.[26]

The same Pope pointed out a few years later in his encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum that under the principles of liberalism: “Authority is severed from the true and natural principle whence it derives all its efficacy for the common good; and the law determining what is right to do is at the mercy of a majority. Now this is simply a road leading to tyranny.”[27]

The liberal, therefore, denies the existence of objective truth and instead proclaims the relativist theory that all opinions are equal because they are all equally right or wrong. In liberalism, “Tolerance meant, therefore, adherence to religious individualism (agnostic indifferentism) and implied theologically the rejection of the Catholic Church, so that a Catholic adhering to an ‘intolerant’ dogmatic faith (claiming to be true) could himself not claim ‘tolerance.’”[28] This is what is meant by the often-heard statement that anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism or prejudice of the liberals.

Politically, liberalism, in the name of its autonomous individualism, seeks to destroy every traditional institution that imposes restraint on society by the objective truths incarnate in the natural and revealed law.

This political doctrine proclaimed, on the one side practically against the traditional institutions and on the other side theoretically against the Christian doctrine, liberty from all religious, moral, and customary restrictions of the individual in a militant anticlericalism, better called anti-ecclesiasticism and anti-monarchism. It declared itself for total religious, moral, and economic freedom; but at the same time it oppressed the Church and her institutions. Out of the neutrality of the state it made a new secular agnostic religion (of republicanism) and, inspired by imperialist nationalism, produced a state that was as absolute and beyond any general rules of morality as was Machiavelli’s Prince.[29]

In Catholic countries, liberal rebellion against the church is known as Laicism. Liberals rallying under the banner of Grand Oriental Freemasonry enact exceptional legislation against the Church and her institutions, confiscating her property, driving out the religious orders, and closing Catholic schools. In order to do this, the Liberals must first overthrow the Catholic hierarchy of the country that protects the church. Hence, the liberals oppose both throne and altar. Republicanism, to liberals, is not merely a neutral form of government (as it is in the United States), but it is a militant secular faith directed against all Christian faiths. For liberals, religious freedom means the freedom of the individual against the church and from her teachings. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, said of the French revolution and subsequent liberal revolutions: “It was a revolution which began in the ghastly masquerades of the French infidelity of the last century. It had two principles – a twofold antagonism, to thrones and altars, to Kings and to priests. It was an atheistic and a Republican revolution.”[30]

Thus, the proclamation of a secular republic by liberals means not only the dethronement (and regicide) of the monarch, but, more importantly, it also means the destruction of the Christian church in that country. This has happened in every country where liberal forces have overthrown the traditional, legitimate government – in France of the Third Republic, in the Spanish Republic of 1931, in revolutionary Mexico, in the Portuguese Republic of 1910, in Castro’s Cuba, in Hungary, in Poland, in Romania, in Bulgaria, and in Russia.

Denying the existence of objective truth and employing the mechanics of popular sovereignty, liberalism sets out to systematically destroy every tradition that stands between it and the absolute Liberte of the French Revolution. Liberalism’s motto is “Ecrase l’infame.” Its religion is scientific humanism; its means to accomplish this is revolution. And its master is Rousseau, that primordial rebel. To liberalism, it would not be too extreme to say, “And I will put an enmity between thee and the Woman (the church), and between thy seed and her seed. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite their heel.” (Genesis 3:15) The truth of the Christian faith demands that every convinced believer must oppose liberalism and all of its works and pomp:

It based its demand for freedom of religion on the contention that the doctrine of the church is superstition. Its demand for compulsory public education was based on the principles of secular rationalism. Its demand for freedom of conscience was based on the thesis that conscience is the individual’s moral autonomy subject to none but itself and is not “the aboriginal Vicar of Christ . . . the messenger of Him, who, both in nature and grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives.” This liberalism, destroying in its autonomous ethics the universal moral law, denying in its principle of indifferentism religious truth and revelation, denying the rules of social justice in economic life with an appeal to supposedly immutable economic laws; this liberalism, which revels in the final secularization of our society and derides the old principle that the union of man with God is the union of man with man and that common brotherhood originates in the common father, this is the liberalism with which the popes rightfully declined to be reconciled.[31]

Symbolically, liberalism replaces the ancient regime’s hands that are clasped in prayer with the clenched fist of the revolution.

As scientific progress destroyed the moral authority of the State to resist revolution, so liberalism gives the revolutionary the moral right to make revolution under the theory of what Kant termed the “Law of Universal Liberty.” To qualify under this premise, the revolutionary only has to admit the equal right to revolution of every other revolutionary. This, he is only too willing to do: His moral right to make violent revolution is enshrined in “The Principles of 1789.” Thus the French Revolutionary Convention declared this in June 1793, when it said, “Insurrection becomes for the people and for every section of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.”[32]

The state may, of course, attempt to stop the revolutionary by its physical power through the force of its arms, but this in no way lessens the moral conviction that the people are entitled to make revolution. The revolutionary then becomes a “political prisoner,” a martyr to the cause, from whom “amnesty” is demanded in the name of Liberte. The “dogma” of universal liberty, freed from the objective truth of the natural and revealed law, provides the charter for the “right of revolution” claimed by every “liberation movement.” It legitimizes every means used by the revolutionary to obtain his goal. Terrorism, political kidnappings, and assassinations all become the moral means of making revolution in the name of the “freedom of the individual.” Such are the justifications appearing in the “position papers” and “statements of principles” of revolutionaries. Invoking doctrinal liberalism, they cite the right to revolution claimed by the original revolutionaries against the legitimate monarchy. On this precedent and in the name of progress, they proclaim a new revolution.

In other words, liberalism legitimates and enshrines the right to revolution. Republics, having by secularism abolished the objective truth as a restraint on liberty, are precluded from appealing to the natural and revealed law as a reason for not rebelling. (Moreover, it would fundamentally contradict itself if it did, because it was by the very denial of natural and revealed law that the first revolutionaries overthrew the legitimate king.) Revolution therefore is consecrated as the inalienable, immutable right “of man and of the citizen.”

The best the state can do is to resort to massive physical force to suppress the new revolutionaries. This, in turn, validates the thesis of the latter that the state is “repressive” and counter to progress and true liberty. The new revolutionaries then turn to terrorism as a “moral means,” justified by the universal law of liberty, as a political weapon for overcoming “oppression” and tyranny. In this, they have many times been supported by apologists in academia and the mass media. The state can only respond with more physical force that, in turn, accelerates and promotes political violence. The state is either toppled by the revolutionaries or a police state is established, restoring order until a new and more well-armed generation of revolutionary rebels appears. Like a drunk cowboy in a motion picture theater, the state makes the mistake of shooting at the figures on the screen rather than at the projector broadcasting them – the real cause – The Liberte of 1789.

It is important to get to the heart and soul of the matter and put effort into what can truly make a difference. Henry David Thoreau declared that, “For every thousand striking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.”[xxxiii] Few ever get to the root cause or core of the problem. The fundamental difficulty was articulated in a resolution of the American Congress on October 12th and 16th, 1778. It simply stated, “True religion and good morals are the only solid foundation [to build on]. . . .”[34] Nothing else works.

Modern Civilization

The hallmark of modern civilization is relevantistic utilitarianism. It teaches that all things are relevant to human pleasure, which is the only thing good in itself, and that pain is the only evil. It is, thus, a universalistic form of hedonism and was propagated chiefly by Jeremy Bentham in his book, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, published in the otherwise significant year of 1789.

According to Bentham, what moves a man to action is always a desire to achieve his own pleasure or avoid his own pain. An act is moral if, of all possible actions, it tends to maximize the balance of pleasures over pain for all concerned and achieves the greatest good for the greatest number. It is, thus, social contract theory as applied to ethics. It implicitly (though not explicitly, like the philosophy of utilitarianism and liberalism) rejects the natural and revealed law, for its axiom of “the greatest good for the greatest number” deals solely with animalistic, material pleasures. All things, therefore, are relevant to and revolve around this central goal.

To modern civilization, pleasures differ only in their quantity. Their intensity, duration, certainty, and extent can be calculated. Thus, one can compare two proposed acts or laws by summing up the total pleasure to be expected from each and subtracting the total expected pain. One should choose the act or law with the more favorable balance of pleasure over pain.

In essence, to the individual man, this philosophy advises him to get rich by all possible means and to produce enjoyment for himself. To the new state, it suggests either liberal capitalism or scientific socialism. Neither take into consideration the right by natural law of a worker to a living wage or the natural law right to private property.

The philosophy of modern civilization is to produce a secular, materialistic utopia where everything is relevant to the production of pleasures. Anything that does not contribute to this materialistic goal is simply termed “irrelevant” and, by this logic, should be abolished. Modern civilization is entirely relevantistic and pragmatic, and its values are entirely materialistic:

Human energies went wholly into the field of secular philosophy and art, into the natural sciences, into politics freed from the restriction of Christian ethics, into economics separated likewise from Christian ethics. Reason and will, not faith and ascetical virtue, earthly happiness and freedom of the individual with a naturalist connotation, not the salvation of the soul and the consoling membership in the mystical body of Christ, these became the prevailing values. So it happened that modern civilization which is natural and is without an understanding for the supernatural faith, which is secular and is without consideration of the life beyond, which is consequently concerned mostly with the production of hedonistic material values, denied the real values of revealed religion by measuring it according to its contribution to material progress. The outcome of this process of dechristianization is then indifferentism, the final belief that [it] is neither truth nor God’s revealed word nor virtue that matters, but utility for material progress and success.

So modern secularist civilization was produced. Life circles around man as the secular citizen and his economic, political, and scientific interests. Undeniably there is a strong tendency to put the religious life into the private sphere, to regard man as the believer, the faithful Christian who makes civilization a Christian one, as a somewhat strange figure in public life. Religion becomes a private affair or even perhaps the pardonable oddity of the private citizen. The Church becomes an association, a private organization of people, legally not different from clubs and associations of men with hobbies. The accent in this secularist civilization is on material values and consequently produces the utilitarian and hedonistic ethics of the nineteenth century with their premiums upon material success and material pleasure. Hence the social institutions, as, for example, marriage, change their meaning. Marriage becomes wholly dependent on the ability of the partners to find subjective (sexual) satisfaction without much regard for the objective end of marriage, transcendent to individual interests. The state, too, loses its dignity as a means to the perfect life; it becomes a night-watchman of safes and stands for the promotion of trade, of profits. Education here means less a strengthening of the moral character; ever more and more it means technical preparation for a lucrative job. This new secular civilization is predominantly materialistic.[35] (emphasis added)

There is a more moderate opinion in modern civilization, particularly in liberal capitalism, that recognizes some value in Christian churches – not, though, for their truth but for their utility in keeping the workers docile. Christianity thus becomes a mere social morality useful for its disciplinary power for the protection of the property of the capitalist classes by keeping workers, women, and children in their places. In this sense, it can, indeed, be used as the “opium of the people.” Those advocating this utilitarian exploitation of Christianity were known as the “Christians of Fear.” Their attitude was perfectly expressed by the French bourgeois anti-clerical philosopher Victor Cousins. During a period of intense labor troubles declared, “Let us throw ourselves at the feet of the Bishops; they alone can save us.”[36]

Nevertheless, the utilitarian atmosphere of modern civilization, and the attitude of the same that all traditional institutions must prove themselves “relevant” by utilitarian principles, makes the Christian mission particularly difficult in countries where this philosophy has taken root:

An exuberant secularism received such an advantage that the unum necessarium, the salvation of souls, was rendered much more difficult. The unchained spiritual and social energies that were poured into the world produced a high instability of social life, rendering the normal care of souls very difficult. The spirit of the “modern man” showed little understanding for the specific Christian virtues of contemplative life. A pursuit of material wealth with 1ittle regard for the consequent sacrifices in human happiness began to divert man’s activity from the religious sphere. In fact, secular utopias of a republican sort began to replace the genuine Christian eschatological hope. Republican institutions often served to push the religious realm so much into the background, and to shove secular purposes into the foreground, that a silent and slow mass apostasy had to be feared. A Republican contest for equal public education for all could easily become a contest against the faith of a private religious group, a status to which the church was demoted. . . .

It can also mean skeptical relativism, insincere propagandist abuse of the confidence of the common man in his political leaders. It was these potentialities, the wanton surrender of traditional and well-tested values which again made the conservatively minded Catholic writers doubtful and ecclesiastical authorities suspicious about what might result from the progress of freedom and of Republicans.[37] (emphasis added)

Basically, the utilitarian philosophy of modern civilization insists on the establishment of everything in terms of its “relevance.” This “relevance” is determined in strictly materialistic terms. The question as to what is “relevant” to modern civilization can best be answered by its fruits and by its basic values.

As in the Divine Trinity, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the love between the Father and the Son; so, too, in the philosophy of revolution, modern civilization is the synthesis of progress (scientific humanism) and liberalism.

Therefore, “relevance” in this view is determined by the values of progress and liberalism. If a given institution advances these values, it is “relevant”. If it does not advance these values, especially if it retards them, it is “irrelevant,” and, according to the principles of utilitarianism, should be abolished. This is what academia and the mass media mean when they term something “relevant” or “irrelevant.” “Relevance” in modern civilization relates directly to the advancement of progress and liberalism and, thus, of the revolution.

The idea implicit in modern civilization is to strip man naked of his beliefs, remove his traditional institutions, and eliminate his self-reliance, by brainwashing him into believing that these concepts are “irrelevant.” After these deconstructions the intellectual elites rebuild him in the image and likeness of the Principles of 1789. He then becomes “the man of the revolution” or “modern man.” Progress and liberalism thereupon become absolute standards replacing the traditional institutions based on the natural and divine law. They, in fact, acquire the status of infallibility because they are “scientific.” If one attempts to question these values, he or she is guilty of “heresy” against modern civilization and is, thus, labeled as “irrational” or, worse, “counter-revolutionary” or part of the “lunatic fringe.”

Like the Holy Spirit, modern civilization is also a spirit propagating the teachings and value system of the revolution. It begins its work before the actual revolution takes place, similar to the Encyclopedists and philosophers in France much in advance of the year 1789. The concept of modern civilization thus prepares the way for the actual revolution by alienating the people from their traditional institutions and rendering them powerless to resist the revolution when it occurs.

The concept of modern civilization seeks with deliberate calculation to destroy traditional institutions, not in spite of the fact that they symbolize the beliefs, traditions, history, nobility, and ideals of the people, but precisely because of it.

The modern state has a very difficult time resisting the techniques of modern civilization, especially if it has enshrined absolute freedom of speech and of the press in its constitution and destroyed by secularism the natural law concept. These freedoms were originally intended to be exercised for the moral edification and education of the people and not for the destruction of the state. Above all else the state has the fundamental right to its continued existence. Yet, insofar as the state adheres to the “Principles of 1789,” it is powerless to resist the sedition of modern civilization; it must be content to helplessly watch its citizens’ faith in it be destroyed by those exercising “freedom of the press” and “academic freedom” – possibly even financing its destruction by funding and supporting the latter.

A possible way out of the quandary created by modern civilization is the approach taken by a justice of the United States Supreme Court when he observed that freedom of speech does not include the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater. By permitting the sedition of modern civilization to destroy the people’s faith in their institutions, the modern state is, in effect, allowing revolutionaries (through their allies) to shout “fire” to the whole nation thereby stampeding them unwittingly to their destruction.

Condemnation of Revolution

The Philosophy of Revolution, comprising progress, liberalism, and modern civilization, was directly behind the French Revolution and every other popular revolution based on the “Principles of 1789.” Further refinement of this philosophy yielded Marxist theory that culminated in the 1917 Communist Russian Revolution. It has been subsequently applied in other Communist revolutions and forms the basis for the current wave of “liberation movements” that have swept the world. In the past two centuries, the practical application of this philosophy has yielded a terrible harvest of devastation and destruction – almost as if it were the opening of a Pandora’s Box sent up from the netherworld. Socialism is the blood brother of Communism and Fascism. These ideologies are the most repressive and destructive on earth.

The socialist/communist/fascist countries of Nazi Germany that ruled in the 20th century and today were responsible for the murder of over 100 million people, and the torture, slow starvation, political enslavement, and violation of basic human rights for the vast majority of the citizen/slaves living under these anti-human regimes (Remember, the NAZI party letters stood for “National SOCIALIST party,” for those who know little history, and claim I confuse socialism with fascism. Mussolini was the first fascist dictator prior to World War II, but his party was the Socialist party of Italy).[38]

It is estimated that the number of mass murders committed by the Soviet Communist regime from 1917 to 1991 are as follows:

3,284,000 deliberate mass murders during the 1917 Civil War Period

2,200,000 willful mass murders during the New Economic Policy (revisionist) 1923 to 1928 period

11,440,000 mass murders during Stalin’s 1929 to 1939 Collectivization period

4,345,000 deliberate mass murders during Stalin’s 1936 to 1938 Great Terror period

5,104,000 deliberate mass murders during Stalin’s 1939 to 1942 Purge period

13,053, 000 willful mass murders by Stalin during the 1941 to 1945 World War II period

15,613,000 deliberate mass murders by Stalin from the end to World War II to his death on 5 March 1953

6,872,000 deliberate mass murders in the post-Stalin Period until the 1991 fall of Communism

That’s 61,911,000 people who were victims of Communist Russia and its oppressive regime. Add to these crimes against humanity the deliberate mass murders committed by the Chinese Communist Regime:

4,968,000 willful mass murders by the Chinese Communists under Chairman Mao during the 1945 to 1949 Chinese Civil War

8,427,000 deliberate mass murders by the Chinese Communists under Chairman Mao during the 1949 to 1955 imposition of Socialism period

747,000 mass murders by the Chinese Communists under Chairman Mao during the 1955 to 1959 of Mass Collectivization and Great Leap Forward period

10,729,000 deliberate mass murders by the Chinese Communists under Chairman Mao during the 1959 to 1966 period of Great Famine and Retrenchment (or Revisionist) period

7,731,000 deliberate mass murders by the Chinese Communists under Chairman Mao during the 1966 to 1976 Cultural Revolution

874,000 mass murders by the Chinese Communists during the 1976 post-Mao period to the present.

That adds up to the slaughter of 33,476,000 human beings. Adding both together, we have a governmental murder total of 95,387,000. In other words, independent of war and other kinds of conflict, it is estimated that six times as many people were killed by the corrupt philosophy of Communism and its ideals during the 20th century than in all that century’s wars combined.[39]

It is estimated that Hitler’s Socialist Republic took the life of 6,000,000 people of the Jewish faith. This is acknowledged by most people. Yet it is extremely rare to ever hear from Liberals, Leftists, Marxists, Progressives, and other deep-thinking “Intellectuals” about the far greater number of Communist mass murders. How is it that the huge number of Communist murders is always conveniently forgotten? Apparently, Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao could teach poor old Hitler how to be a better murderer. The Communists mass murdered seventeen times the number of persons murdered by the Nazis. There is an important New Testament saying that, “By their fruits, ye shall know them.” (Matthew 7:20) Certainly, Communism has shown its true colors.

The amazing fruits or results of capitalism are beyond compare –- never in the history of the world was greater prosperity, riches, and wealth created:

Capitalism, even though not perfect because no economic system created by human beings can be perfect, in every country in which it flourished, dramatically raised the standard of living for the hundreds of millions of people living under a capitalist or semi-capitalist system. Of course, America is the prime example of this. In the course of 150 years, capitalism in America raised the standard of living of hundreds of millions of Americas to levels undreamed of by humankind for the past 5000 years. It gave average Americans the right and the chance to live a prosperous, decent life, to fulfill their potential and dreams, to see their children constantly do better than they did, to have personal liberty that no country on Earth in the last 5000 years ever gave its citizens. America was a miracle of liberty and prosperity, not for the governing power elite, but for the average man and woman.[40]

The example of Hong Kong and China provides an impressive lesson on freedom being the greatest thing on earth for enhancing prosperity:

Let’s look at Hong Kong and China as examples of what liberalism /socialism /Marxism does to people’s lives vs. capitalism. Hong Kong is mostly a barren rock off the southern Coast of China. The British ruled it for over 100 years. The British allowed Hong Kong to establish the closest example we’ll ever see to true free-market capitalism. What was the result? A stinking little island off the Coast of China that had withered in the backwaters of history for thousands of years, suddenly became a productive powerhouse. Remember, this little island has few natural resources of its own. But the British gave the citizens of Hong Kong economic and political liberty. They stopped (until recently) the tyrannical rule of the Chinese Communists over Hong Kong. The result? Where most of the Chinese on Hong Kong were living in miserable poverty before they got their liberty and free-market by the British, after they got their political and economic liberty (which is what a free market means), the economy exploded in productivity, giving millions of Hong Kong Chinese the chance to have a prosperous, productive, happy life.

In contrast, Communist China, before the free-market reforms were enacted 20 years ago, was like Cuba today. A miserable socialist hell-hole, where the vast majority of one billion Chinese were enslaved to the vicious socialist/Marxist agenda of Mao, and lived miserable, destitute lives. Then look what happened after the Communist Party instituted free-market (or close to free-market) reforms. China, the same China that was sunk in misery and poverty, exploded it’s productivity and standard of living for the vast majority of its people, so that now a billion Chinese have the chance to live prosperous, happy lives. What was the crucial difference between China 20 years ago and today? Very simple.

. . . the Chinese COMMUNISTS realized that they would have to give their citizens the benefits of an economic free market, meaning the economic freedom of capitalism, if they wanted to stay in power.[41]

Socialism doesn’t work in the long-run, because it does damage to the most powerful and effective incentive known on earth – the profit or reward motive. As a result, it is a philosophy of want and ruin. It runs on borrowed money, because it eventually cannot feed itself. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher observed that, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”[42] You can no longer steal what no longer exists. The pie of production has gotten smaller and smaller to redistribute. It is merely common sense that any system that runs on plunder, the involuntary redistribution of wealth, instead of the powerful motivation to excel is going to turn progress into ruin eventually. It is a sick and dying system that eventually runs out of gas.

Government cannot help someone without hurting [legally and involuntarily stealing it from] someone else. It cannot give to someone without first taking [it by force or coercive power] from someone else. The government does not create wealth; it only consumes it [through government corruption, and] redistributes it [that is, what is left over after “fraud, waste and abuse” to the poor, creating a welfare state of dependent people who do not know how to take care of themselves].[43]

Big controlling government, as must exist to maintain socialism and other coercive regimes, usually ruins everything it touches. It focuses on controlling people, rather than protecting freedom and the inner drive or motivation to be productive and improve upon the past.

As the socialist, communist and fascist philosophy is directly opposed to the natural law principles upon which international law is based, these systems complete abrogation of the natural law and international law have been severely condemned. But many still believe in the lie because of its false and deceitful promises in spite of the fact that it has never worked. The problem is that socialism is very seductive. Do nothing. Enjoy life and let someone else pay the bills. Yet the tyranny, oppression, and plunder involved are not the friends of mankind.

The Pope, acting in the exercise of his Magisterium or teaching authority wrote a most direct condemnation of the referenced French Revolutionary “Principles of 1789” in 1864 when Pope Pius IX issued the famous Syllabus of Errors. The Syllabus reviewed every aspect of the great rebellion of mankind against the natural law that undermines the basis of constituted authority, Christian society, and the rule of international law.

Vibrating with the holy wrath of a Moses against the idolatry of Israel, Pius IX proceeded to analyze, condemn, and anathematize the errors of the French Revolution and the philosophy behind it fully and systematically in eighty brief theses, which were so perfectly and brilliantly precise that no one could possibly mistake their meaning or significance.

Theses 1-7 treat the errors of pantheism, naturalism or scientific humanism (denying God), and rationalism (opposing reason to revelation). Theses 8-14 deal with moderate rationalism. Theses 15-18 analyze indifferentism, utilitarianism, Communism, and socialism. Theses 19-38 condemn laciest errors against the rights of the Church. Theses 39-55 condemn positivist errors relating to law and the power of the secular state. Theses 56-64 attack errors against ethics and the natural law. Theses 65-74 condemn similar errors undermining the family. Theses 75-76 deal with threats to the independence of the Holy See. Finally, theses 77-80 treat errors against the Catholic Religion. Culminating in a crescendo, the Syllabus of Errors condemns the Philosophy of Revolution once and for all: “If anyone thinks that the Roman Pontiff can and should reconcile himself and come to terms with progress, with liberalism, and with modern civilization, let him be anathema,” which means let him be cursed or loathed.

The rejection of the authority of God over the state and the assertion of materialism and scientism implicit in the concept of progress was explicitly condemned in Thesis No. 2. The scientism in progress was explicitly rejected in Thesis No. 58: It is not true “that only those powers rooted in matter are to be acknowledged.” The religious ideology of scientism or secular humanism was condemned as contrary to the natural and revealed law in Thesis No. 4: “It is not true that ‘all the truths of religion derive from the natural force of human reason; hence reason is the principal norm by which man can and must obtain knowledge of all truths of any kind whatever.’” The implementation of the civil religion of scientific humanism in the educational institutions of the secular state as progress was anathematized in Thesis No. 45: It is not true “that the state has the exclusive right to decide all questions in schools in which Christian youth are educated.” Likewise, the Syllabus condemned the proposition that the moral authority of the state does not come from God in Thesis No. 39.

The popular “right to revolution” in the concept of liberalism was severely condemned in Thesis No. 63: “If anyone says, ‘It is allowed to withdraw obedience from legitimate princes and rebel against them’ let him be anathema” – again, meaning “let him be accursed.”

This would, of course, apply equally to the support of traditional, legitimate republics. The idea of social contract in liberalism is rejected in Thesis No. 60: It is not true “that (political) authority is nothing other than the numbers and sum of material powers.”

The rejection of the natural law as “irrelevant” by the sedition propaganda of modern civilization was specifically condemned in Thesis No. 56: It is not true “that human laws do not need to conform to the law of nature or to receive divine sanction.” Indeed, the sedition spread by the propaganda technique of modern civilization was explicitly condemned by the earlier Encyclical Mirari Vos of Pope Gregory XVI: “Divine and human laws cry out against those who by base plots of war and sedition try to undermine loyalty to rulers and drive them from government.”

Therefore, can we not see that the institutions arising out of revolutions of this nature are corrupt in their fundamental roots by harmful philosophies that are contrary to the natural law? Count de Maistre sums the point up very precisely when he says, “A healthy beginning leads to maturity, but rottenness leads to nothing.”[44]

Injurious core philosophies and beliefs promote and encourage actions that poison and/or canker society. The point is, you can’t build something right and good on something fundamentally wrong. You simply cannot build something sweet, wholesome, and delicious on something putrid, rotten, and false. You cannot build well-being and health on that which is toxic, poisonous, and injurious. This is a reality that we cannot get around. Cicero defined natural law as the only real law on earth. He wrote:

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting. . . . It is sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations. . . . [This] one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all for he is the author of this law.[45]

Edmund Burke declared that it is “natural” to:

. . . fear God; . . . look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is NATURAL to be so affected, because all other feelings are false and spurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty. . . .[46]

The natural law, which is set by nature, holds that, corresponding to the right of the ruler to govern there is imposed on citizens an obligation of obedience, respect, and cooperation, which is a natural disposition and desire if it is encouraged. As St. Thomas Acquinas states, “Now man owes three things to the head of the community: first, fidelity; second, reverence; thirdly, service.”[47] In particular the citizen is bound to obey the just laws of the state. He is bound to treat the ruler with respect as acknowledgement of the latter’s right to rule. Finally, he is bound to cooperate with the ruler in promoting the public welfare; this is the duty not only to merely obey the laws of the ruler but also, insofar as in him lies, to cooperate with the ruler in promoting the public good.[48]

Opposed to this natural law duty are three classes of violation of the natural law obligation of citizens: (1) Disobedience or non-conformity to just public laws. (2) Disrespect for authority, much of which is the result of the sedition propagated by the concept of modern civilization. (3) Rebellion that is an act of armed aggression on the part of the citizen against the government, thereby involving the complete reversal of the position of ruler and subject. It is the gravest of all crimes against the state.[xlix] Included in rebellion would be the terrorism and political kidnappings of our own times. Today, revolution usually comes about through the secret plotting of small cadres of dedicated insurrectionists, such as the Communist Party and other secret societies, coupled with the wide-spread sedition of modern civilization to neutralize the people and destroy the resolution of the legitimate government to resist. As such, it is a violent criminal conspiracy against the government:

First, rebellion is an act of physical violence, of armed attack. No degree of moral opposition to the government, even though provocative of widespread disaffection, could constitute a rebellion. Secondly, rebellion is an armed uprising, not against a particular minister or party, but against the crown, the constitution, the sovereign ruling authority. Thirdly, a rebellion is an act of aggression. In rebellion it is the citizens who take the offensive against the government, just as in murder it is the murderer who first attacks. . . . In rebellion, we repeat, it is the citizens who take the offensive against the government, making an unprovoked attack on it, in order to effect its overthrow.[50] (emphasis added).

As noted by Fr. Bernard Haring, C.S.S.R., the famous natural law theologian due to his monumental three volume work, The Law of Christ, was termed “the Theologian of Vatican II,” wrote that the government resulting from rebellion is illegitimate, and the citizen is under a serious obligation to defend the legitimate government, even to the point of killing the revolutionary:

The basic here is: by what standard are we to judge that a government is illegitimate? Note the following.

A government can be judged illegitimate on the basis of the ways and means it uses to attain power. The revolutionary who rebels against his lawful government does not obtain the title to legitimacy of authority by gaining actual control of a part of the state and exercising power over it. (emphasis supplied).

Every citizen is obliged to assist his own lawful government to repulse revolt even to the point, if need be, of killing a usurper in the course of the defensive struggle. Such an engagement is an execution of the will of lawful authority or more specifically a legal act of war. It is not taking another’s life on private authority. This would not be lawful.[51] (emphasis added)

The concept of revolution itself, the overthrow and destruction of the natural constitution of the nation, is directly opposed to the natural law. In this sense, it is a rebellion not merely against the legitimately-constituted government but fundamentally a rebellion against God, who designated the natural constitution of the nation by secondary causes through His providential guidance of that nation. This guidance came through the generations in the course of its history and its extension into nationhood thereby revealing His designated will. This can easily be seen from the fact that revolutionaries set about to destroy the Church and execute the clergy as soon as they have gained de facto control. Having despoiled the Church, revolutionaries will often seize and execute the King as the representative of God’s authority – a strike at God whom they cannot seize. For this reason regicide was designated one of the most serious sins by medieval theologians.

The natural law strictly forbids revolution as a violation of the natural order:

That Rebellion is . . . a violation of the Natural Law can easily be established. First, a lawful and authoritative government has a right to obedience from the citizens, i.e. its laws should be obeyed; and therefore any attempt to overthrow the government by armed violence is unnatural and wrong. Such an act is not merely an act of disobedience, but it is the most radical act of disobedience conceivable, since it strikes at the very source and fountain of law itself – the sovereign government. Secondly, rebellion is a complete reversal of the natural order. The attitude which nature requires in a person who is subject, is an attitude of subjection, of submission. In rebellion this order is reversed. The subjects subject the ruler to themselves, and in the most extreme manner possible by attempting his overthrow. There could be no more direct or unequivocal perversion of the natural order than this. Thirdly, rebellion is a crime against the community, for, if government is necessary for the welfare of the community, rebellion reverses this condition and leads invariably to confusion, disturbance, and irretrievable loss.

Rebellion, therefore, is always a de-ordination and a crime. It is always a violation of natural law. And since the natural law is rooted in the eternal law of God, and since all civil authority, being of natural law, is also ultimately from God, so rebellion is a grave violation of the Divine Law, and a grave sin.[52] (emphasis added)

In sum, it can be said that the right to popular revolution claimed by the June 1793 French Revolutionary Convention simply does not exist under the natural law; such revolutions that take place in exercise of that “right” of revolution are strictly illegal; and that the resulting de facto government of the usurper is simply illegitimate. This result is confirmed by the doctrines of international law referred to in the preceding section, and, as this study has demonstrated, international law is derived from the natural law, which is a means of determining what its doctrines are or should be.

Rebellious attitudes, fired by popular sovereignty or the thinking that they have the right and obligation to change things by force and violence, is not only un-Christian, but it is un-civilized and wrong. Karl Marx (1818-1883), the author of The Communist Manifesto, recognized and taught that, “Democracy (which idealizes the mindset of popular sovereignty] is the [royal] road to socialism,” because the myth of popular sovereignty, gone to its logical conclusion, perpetuates the false idea that the people have the sole right to rule and, therefore, the government is usurping their rights.[liii] Likewise, Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), another infamous revolutionary, clearly stated that, “Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen,” because the idea of the people having the supreme right or license to change things is needed in order to push the people into revolt.[54]

The whole revolutionary system, institutes, . . . text, . . . [and] comment, are [in fact] the very reverse . . . fundamentally, of all the laws on which civil life has hitherto been upheld in all the governments of the world.[55]

Jean J. Burlamaqui reminds us that:

An opinion, which saps the foundation of all authority, which destroys all power, and consequently all society, cannot be admitted as a principle of [right] reasoning, or of [healthy] conduct in politics.”[56]

Government can be dangerous, but no government is the worst thing of all. Anarchy literally means that no one is safe to do anything. No one is protected in their rights. A farmer might be able to sow his field, but he cannot keep others from robbing him of his just harvest. In anarchy, there are no laws or way to enforce justice and equity. The result: common decency evaporates and civil society goes with it.

. . . [In] ordinary circumstances . . . obedience [is] a duty, and resistance [is] a crime. . . . Even the slave of a bad government has no right to produce [misery like the so-called freedom fighters do]. . . . I have no more right to produce that wild disorder [of revolution and insurrection] . . . still less to produce the bloodshed, and the desolation, and the bad passions . . . which would be the inevitable consequence of long protracted civil dissentions [and seditions]. This general tendency of obedience to power and happiness, is, as I remarked . . . the true right of divine authority; a right which is [certainly] divine, because the virtue which loves the power [in charge] and happiness of all [all the people and the whole country] is itself of a divine obligation.[57]

It is produces much good, constructive lives, and real progress. Hence, obedience is:

. . . an indispensable obligation on all subjects not to resist their sovereign, but to respect and obey him, so long as he uses his power with equity and moderation, and does not exceed the limits of his authority.[58]

Therefore, when tyranny and oppression does not exist:

It is . . . right to overlook the lesser faults of sovereigns, and to have a regard to the laborious and exalted office, with which they are invested for our preservation. Tacitus beautifully says; “We must endure the luxury and avarice of sovereigns, as we endure the barrenness of a soil, storms, and other inconveniences of nature. There will be vices as long as there are men; but these are not continual, and are recompensed by the intermixture of better qualities.”[59]

If, for the smallest faults, the people had a right to resist or depose their sovereign, no prince [no republican government or otherwise] could maintain his [or its] authority. . . .[60]

And thus, the whole protective and beneficial purpose of government would be useless and full of caprice, thereby allowing civil society to deteriorate. Hence, “We must indeed make some allowance for the weakness inseparable from humanity. . . .[61]

If the prince hold the government by the consent of the people or by hereditary right, his vices and excesses are to be borne as long as he neglect only the laws of decency and modesty which are binding on himself; for rulers are not lightly to be changed, lest great evils be incurred, and serious disturbances arise. If, however, be bring the state to destruction, make a spoil of public and private property, despise the public laws and sacred religion; it is not to be borne. It must be carefully considered what mode should be taken to depose such a prince, lest evil be added to evil, and crime be avenged by crime.[62] (emphasis added)

We must not expect perfection in government or in people for imperfection and imperfect human beings will always exist. Sedition is not to be taken lightly as it is a most horrible crime. It must be remembered that:

. . . It is Rebellion [high treason to] unjustly . . . deprive a King and his right Heirs of the Crown, and that those who had a hand in it are bound in conscience to endeavour to restore him or them to their just Rights again. . . . It is a very great Sin in those who are instrumental in raising Rebellion, and who are thereby guilty of a very enormous Crime. . . .[63]

When protected with basic inalienable human rights that belong to mankind, men are bound to support and sustain the governments to which they belong. To operate under any other principle is against good common sense and common decency. It is to invite the absurd idea that whatever happens to be popular at that given moment in time should dominate everything. No government could last long on such a flimsy foundation as following temporary fads or whimsical ideas of being freedom fighters when they have basic rights. Such would invite anarchy and ruin rather than peace and prosperity. Therefore, for the most part:

Rebellion against [even] a tyrannical prince . . . is [rarely] worthwhile [or beneficial]. It is [almost] always a crime against society. “By obedience [to such a government] a few particulars remain in danger; [but, on the other hand, by [full participation in] rebellion, all [the principles of life, liberty and property are put in grave peril as the results can be horrific]”[64]

"Revolutions are events that are seldom influenced by the nice calculations of civilians. They are like the earthquake or the hurricane. . . ."[65] They are extremely destructive and are to be avoided, if possible. They are often far worse than the oppression and tyranny of a reigning dictator. Ninety percent of the time, the so-called freedom fighters do much more damage and harm than they do any good to their fellow man. They end up committing atrocities and violating human rights to a greater level or degree than the semi-unjust and imperfect government that they fight against. The point: ". . . No citizen [or organization] of an existing society has a natural right to undermine or destroy a Sovereign State," if it is basically trying to do good.[66] Rebellion and sedition against a legitimate government is treachery of the worst kind. Great care must be taken in regard to these things.

The following propositions of international law can, with right thinking and good common sense, be sustained and upheld as inviolate:

1. The right to popular revolution claimed in the French Revolution is fundamentally contrary to international law.

2. A legitimate government does not lose its authority by the fact that a revolution of this nature has occurred.

3. A legitimate government is entitled to aid and assistance from other sovereigns in subduing revolution and reasserting its authority over the nation.

4. The legitimate government is entitled to all of the assets of the nation located abroad, including military equipment, ships, and units of its armed services located abroad. Additionally, the legitimate government is entitled to the continued services of its citizens located abroad and to the performance of contracts for military equipment made in the name of the nation.

5. In the event a legitimate government is unjustly deposed, it is entitled to de jure recognition of its claims by the other members of the international community.

6. Should other members of the international community have necessity to deal with the usurper, they should do so on a strictly de facto basis.

7. The legitimate government has the right to reorganize its forces abroad to regain control by military action, and its efforts must be accorded status if not given direct assistance from other sovereigns.

Legitimate Right of Resistance to Tyranny

In contradistinction to the always illegal “right” of popular revolution is the doctrine of the legitimate right of resistance to tyranny. It differs from revolution in that it is undertaken for reasons that are legitimate under the natural law. It should accordingly receive the sympathetic recognition of international law. It is noted that in the natural law the legitimate right of resistance, as such, is fundamentally different from revolution:

Such resistance is not to be spoken of as rebellion, which, as we have said, always denotes aggression on the part of the people. It is an act of self-defense and nothing more. It is no more rebellion than disabling one who has the strangle grip on another and attempts to kill him is murder. This is not a question of names only, it is a question of fact and reality, with immense significance in the moral law. Resistance in self-defense is not a crime, it is an act wholly different from that of unjust aggression, and we have no right, therefore, to include it in the same category as rebellion which is essentially an act of aggression.[67] (emphasis added)

It is therefore important to the establishment of the legitimate right of resistance in international law to keep the distinction between it and revolution precise. Earlier exercises of the legitimate right of resistance, such as the American Revolution, have not always done so (undoubtedly due to the Colonists’ lack of exposure to Theistic concepts). This has led to the unfortunate confusion between them and clearly illegitimate revolutions, such as the French Revolution and the Communist Russian Revolution of 1917.[68]

The right to legitimate resistance is predicated on the existence of a tyranny. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great natural law philosopher, defines tyrannical government and the legitimate right of resistance thereto as follows:

. . . A tyrannical government is not just, because it is directed, not to the common good, but to the private good of the ruler, as the Philosopher states (Polite. iii.5; Ethic. viii 10). Consequently there is no sedition in disturbing a government of this kind, unless indeed the tyrant’s rule be disturbed so inordinately, that his subjects suffer greater harm from the consequent disturbance than from the tyrant’s government. Indeed it is the tyrant rather that is guilty of sedition, since he encourages discord and sedition among his subjects, that he may lord over them more securely; for this is tyranny, being conducive to the private good of the ruler, and to the injury of the multitude.[69]

Thus, the essence of tyranny is that the government is not directed to the common good. Instead, the government is directed to the good of the tyrant and his accomplices and the detriment of the people. Tyranny would undoubtedly also result from a government conducted for the benefit of a totalitarian party or a section of the people that is and against the interests of the rest of the people. A dictatorship of the proletariat in a Communist country, where the government is conducted solely for the benefit of the ruling Communist Party, is an excellent example, confirmed by the fact that Communist governments literally have to build walls around their countries to keep people from fleeing their oppression. Certain types of liberal capitalist states also approach a tyranny where the government is run solely for the benefit of the capitalists, as a country, it has none of the moral attributes and responsibility of a traditional aristocracy and instead simply seeks to exploit the cheap labor of the poor.

As St. Thomas Aquinas’ answer refers to the “injury of the multitude,” this obviously indicates the violation of the duties of a ruler to his subjects. St. Thomas defines these duties as follows:

. . . He, God, prescribed how the king after his appointment should behave, in regard to himself; namely, that he should not accumulate chariots and horses, nor wives, nor immense wealth: because through craving for such things princes become tyrants and forsake justice. – He also appointed the manner in which they were to conduct themselves towards God: namely, that they should continually read and ponder on God’s Law, and should ever fear and obey God. – Moreover, He decided how they should behave towards their subjects, namely, that they should not proudly despise them, or ill-treat them and that they should not depart from the paths of justice.[70]

From the preceding quotations from St. Thomas, we can derive a good working definition of the elements of tyranny under the natural law:

I. A government conducted for the benefit of the ruler, a party, or oligarchy that is contrary to the common good.

A. Accumulation of vast wealth by illegitimate means on behalf of the tyrant and his accomplices. This can be either personal wealth or wealth placed at the disposal of a tyrannical ideology. However, this does not exclude a reasonable civil list to the ruler (commensurate with the nature and dignity of his office and his responsibilities), the payment of tithes to the Church (which are applied for the common good in the form of needed religious or charitable uses), or even certain reasonable and limited tax benefits (namely the exemption of certain entailed estates attached to specific titles of nobility from death duties in order to preserve the public service of that family to the nation – with other wealth being taxable) given in the past to the traditional aristocracy. While tax benefits for the wealthy may seem initially unfair, these tax benefits were repaid in the form of military service (up to World War I, the great noblemen often maintained regiments of the national army out of their own pockets) and diplomatic expenses (the typical cost of historical diplomatic services provided by the nobles far exceeded the modest salaries and reimbursement associated with the office). These were services given to the nation by the nobility and various noble orders of chivalry. In England, the inclusion of a titled name is sine qua non (the essential condition) for successful charitable promotion and religious endowment of churches, hospitals, religious schools, and institutions. The maintenance of these noble traditions being for the common good, or as Pius XII observed, for the public edification.

B. The direction of the natural resources of the country for the personal or political advancement of the tyranny. This is especially evident in Communist countries where the economy is directed for the political and military advancement of the Communist ideology.

C. Massive economic exploitation of the country and its people for the benefit of the tyranny. This includes the enactment of laws and adoption of public policies designed to facilitate the same. General tax policies favoring tyrannical interests, such as especially low taxation rates conceded to corporations or exempting them from the just burden of taxes shared by the rest of the country. The Communist use of slave and concentration camp labor is especially indicative of this type of exploitation.

II. The injury to the multitude resulting from the abandonment of the common good.

A. Injury to the multitude especially includes the suppression of religion, the enactment of anti-clerical laws, the suppression or expulsion of religious orders, confiscation of church property, and abolition of service orders of chivalry. Specifically, this consists of the extermination of the clergy, limiting their numbers or discouraging their vocations, which constitutes ecclesiastical genocide. (See APPENDIX II) The clergy is, in fact, the most useful segment of the population as they direct man to his true end. The clergy is actually the greatest supporter of legitimate governments and the best guarantee against revolutionary sedition. Thus, the enactment of anti-clerical legislation constitutes prima facie evidence of the existence of a tyranny.

B. Application of the resources of the nation in such a manner as to exclude the working portion of the population from a living wage, the amount of wages not having some relation to functions performed, and preventing the working population from proper religious, educational, and health care. This is contrary to right reason as the true wealth of a ruler lies in the quality and excellence of his subjects – they being more valuable to him than any material possession ever could be. In Communist countries, the people are little more than slaves of the Communist Party, and are allowed only a de minimus standard of living. In certain liberal capitalist countries, the economy may be conducted for the aggrandizement of large corporations, that receive general and widespread illegitimate tax advantages unrelated to either the common good or the services (none) they render to the nation, the nation being their servant.

C. Injury to the multitude also encompasses the sufferings to which the people may be subject due to the arbitrary caprices of those operating the tyranny. Such would be the untold human misery caused by the implementation of Communist “five-year” economic plans.

D. Sufferings caused by unjust wars of aggression undertaken for the advancement of the tyranny also constitute injury to the multitude. The ruler, of course, has the right, if the not the duty, to conduct defensive wars on behalf of himself or an ally and also wars of vindictive justice to aid an innocent nation being victimized by aggression or a tyrant (such as Idi Amin of Uganda).

III. The denial of justice also constitutes tyranny.

A. This means the general enactment of laws contrary to the natural and revealed laws. The laws of most Communist countries are of this nature.

B. In particular, this includes the abolition of the natural law rights of the subject, such as the abolition of religion or private property. This is an injustice and an act of stealing or thwarting a natural right and an inalienable inner desire and yearning of mankind.

C. Denial of justice also includes the denial of a fair and impartial court system where citizens can have their legitimate natural law rights vindicated. Justice is especially perverted when the court system operates to implement the ideological – economic goals of the tyranny, as it does in Communist countries.

IV. The ill-treatment and despising of subjects is another element of tyranny.

A. Such occurs, as St. Thomas points out, when “a tyrant rules his subjects as if they were his slaves.”[71] This is especially vivid in Communist countries where, by law, the people belong to the state and are treated as work-horses. This includes, too, educational policies designed merely to produce docile workers, who are technically-trained with only the economic needs of the tyranny in mind. However, this would not forbid a ruler to prohibit doctrines contrary to the natural and revealed law from being taught or to prohibit sedition, especially that of modern civilization, from being spread under the guise of “academic freedom.” His duties as a ruler, in fact, require him to do these things for the common good.

B. The regarding of the people as mere objects for exploitation by the tyranny likewise shows a mean and contemptuous attitude. Such would be the refusal to enact just laws to protect the poor and minority groups from oppression. The duty of a just ruler is to govern his subjects as his family, a proposition derived from the natural constitution of the nation. This can be seen in the conduct of St. Louis IX of France and the saintly Emperor Charles of Austria-Hungary in our own time.

C. Contempt for subjects would also include policies to limit births among them, especially to save money. Such contempt is especially manifest in the utilitarian attitude of a tyrant that it is cheaper to promote abortions than to pay out the legitimate costs of government in relation to increases in society.

V. Moral iniquity of the ruler. St. Thomas states that the ruler should be a God-fearing man, devoted to the study of the Word of God, and ever seeking ways to obey Him. A two-fold reason, one natural, one supranatural, is behind this requirement:

A. An upright, God-fearing ruler will inevitably rule justly and enact good laws. In short, he is the best guarantee of the advancement of the common good and the prevention of tyranny.

B. On a higher level, the personal life and conduct of the ruler will often be imitated by his subjects. Due to his prestige, the ruler is often the mirror the subject will look to in order to adjust his own life. If he is a good and upright man, he will inevitably lead many to Heaven with him. How tragic it is for even one man to be lost, but how infinitely tragic if he takes his nation with him. This was undoubtedly the case of tyrants of the ilk and infamy of such men as Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.

C. Therefore, there is a positive requirement that the ruler be personally a just man in the manner of St. Joseph, who was, in short, a man morally fit to wear a crown and wield a scepter. (As noted in the preceding section, the process of the education of a prince is designed to do this and produces a man of an entirely different character than grasping party politicians . . . compare, for example, the character of King Juan Carlos of Spain to that of some recent presidents of the United States)

It can be seen that the referenced elements of a tyranny deal with the fruits of the conduct of the government and not with the manner in which the government is constitutionally organized or its form. The ruler is legitimately entitled to the powers that are his under the natural constitution of the nation. Furthermore, a monarch is entitled to transmit to his son that which he received from his father. The exercise of his legitimate powers is not tyranny. As noted in the value analysis of monarchy, it is the most useful form of government and the one best calculated to achieve the common good. Most of the agitation against it stems from the philosophy of revolution, the real object of which is to destroy the Church. St. Thomas Aquinas finds that under the natural law it is the best form of government, especially where it contains an aristocracy and elements of popular representation.[72] The king himself is trained for the office since babyhood, as was King Juan Carlos, and, as was noted, is far more likely to govern in the common good than a party politician.

Indeed, in the elements of tyranny, we see far more the character of republican rulers in the United States, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Communist Bloc than we see tyranny in modern constitutional monarchies.

The fact that traditional institutions have been victimized by the subtle propaganda of modern civilization in no way invalidates them, just as republican tyrants that have been elected with huge majorities do not have their tyranny validated by their election. For example, Hitler received 80-90% of all votes, and Nixon was elected with the greatest majority of any prior American President. Prior to His death, Christ Himself lost that first election to Barrabas.

Hence, the arguments of popular revolutionaries seeking to undermine a monarchy must simply be dismissed as contrary to the natural law and recognized for what they are: sedition and treason designed to subvert and destroy a legitimate government.

To constitute tyranny that justifies resistance, it takes more than merely one, several, or even all five elements or acts of tyranny. As Fr. Bernard Haring so correctly observed, “The government does not cease to be legitimate by the mere fact that it issues one or other unjust and oppressive directives or passes one or other unjust and oppressive ‘law’ nor is its legitimacy vitiated by the sins of the legislators.”[73] The right to legitimate resistance is always an extreme measure and, thus, can only be asserted in extreme cases and under certain well-defined conditions of the natural law.

It should be noted that the doctrine of the natural law is very conservative on this point, as so many evils arise out of even the legitimate exercise of the right of resistance: namely, the weakening of the concept of legitimate authority, as many elements in the population will not understand how this differs from revolution. Genuine revolutionaries will try to blur it the natural law in order to give weight to their own illegitimate revolutionary ideas that spring not from the natural law but from the totally illegitimate French Revolution of 1789. If anything, the natural law doctrine destroys the thesis of popular revolutionaries rather than establishes their “right to revolution.”

The five considerations that must be resolved before the legitimate right of resistance to tyranny is exercised are as follows:

First, the degree of tyranny involved must be overwhelming, continued over a long period of time, and with no end or abatement in sight:

. . . The people cannot resort to physical resistance for the redress of any and every grievance. If they could, the normal condition of every country would be one of civil war, and peaceful progress would wholly cease. In every nation there are innumerable conflicting interests to be considered and some people are bound to suffer injustice. These ordinary injustices the people should aim at remedying by constitutional means only. Resistance to government can be tolerated only in the case of a government that has become substantially and habitually tyrannical.[74] (emphasis added)

A Communist or other totalitarian government is ipso facto a tyranny of this type, for it violates, in every respect, the very essence of the natural law. It is universal human experience that such governments can never be voted out. They are, like lost souls, irrevocably committed. Right reason demands that they be deposed immediately. The same is true of governments that are clearly on their way to the establishment of a totalitarian state, which is called “building socialism” in Communist parlance.

Socialism uses the force of government to plunder by coercion from those who produce and give the production to those who don’t. By its very nature, it is oppressive and, therefore, illegitimate. Life, Liberty, and Property are the three most important things a legitimate government must protect and hold inviolate from plunder. This kind of tyranny, so clearly different from traditional despotism, is a catastrophe of the most diabolical nature. When implemented, and built on godless immorality, it produces some of the worst kind of behavior possible. Such occurred in Spain where the 1931-1936 Republic, en route to “building socialism,” attacked the Church.

These attacks were accompanied by a colossal and uncontrollable onslaught on the lives of members of the Church and of the bourgeoisie. The Nationalists since the war have named a figure of 85,940 for all reputed murdered or executed in Republican Spain during the war. This calculation is certainly not an under-estimation, though it compares favorably with the wilder accusations of three or four hundred thousand made during the course of the war. Of those killed, 7,937 were religious persons: 12 were bishops, 283 nuns, 5,255 priests, 2,492 monks and 249 novices. (The figure for murdered priests thus compares well with Paul Claudel’s glorification of Seize mille pretres massacres et pas une apostasie!) The approximate accuracy of these figures is corroborated by such other evidence as is available. . . .

Many of these crimes were accompanied by a partly frivolous, partly sadistic cruelty. The parish priest of Navalmoral, for example, told the militiamen who took him prisoner, “I want to suffer for Christ.” “Oh do you,” they answered, “then you shall die as Christ did.” They stripped him and scourged him mercilessly. Next, they fastened a beam of wood on their victim’s back, gave him vinegar to drink, and crowned him with thorns. “Blaspheme and we will forgive you,” said the leader of the militia. “It is I who forgive and bless you,” replied the priest. The militiamen discussed how they should kill him. Some wished to nail him to a cross, but in the end they simply shot him. His last request was to be shot facing his tormentors so that he might die blessing them.

The Bishop of Jaen was killed with his sister by a specially invited militiawoman nicknamed La Pecosa (the freckled) before a crowd of two thousand tumultuous people near Madrid in a piece of swampy ground known as “Uncle Raymond’s pool.” The Bishops of Guadix and Almeria were forced to wash the deck of the prison ship Astoy Mendi before being murdered near Malaga. The Bishop of Ciudad Real was murdered while at work on a history of Toledo. After he was shot, his card index of 1,200 cards was destroyed. A nun was killed because she refused the proposition of marriage offered to her by one of the militiamen who stormed her convent of Nuestra Senor del Amparo in Madrid. The “Blood Committee” of El Pardo (Province of Madrid) became gradually intoxicated on communion wine while they tried the parish priest. One of the militiamen shaved himself using the chalice as a washing bowl. There were isolated instances of the violation of nuns, before their execution. The corpse of a Jesuit was laid in the Calle Maria de Molina, Madrid, with the placard “I am a Jesuit” fastened about his neck. In Cernera, rosary beads were forced into monks’ ears till their tympanum was perforated. Several priests were undoubtedly burned alive. An exhibition of the exhumed bodies of nineteen Salesian nuns attracted great crowds in Barcelona. Fr. Antonio Diaz del Moral of Ciempozuelos was taken to a corral filled with fighting bulls, where he was gored to unconsciousness. Afterwards, one of his ears was cut off, in imitation of the amputation of the ear of a bull in honour of a matador, following a very successful faena. Certain persons were burned, and others buried, alive – the latter after being forced to dig their own graves. At Alcazar de San Juan, a young man distinguished for his piety (and also perhaps his sanctimoniousness) had his eyes dug out. In that province, Ciudad Real, indeed, the crimes were extraordinarily atrocious.

. . . A crucifix was forced down the mouth of a mother of two Jesuits. Eight hundred persons were thrown down a mine shaft. And, always, the moment of death would be greeted with applause, as if it were the moment of truth in a corrida. Then there would be shouts of “Liberty! Down with Fascism.” More than one priest went mad at these events. One Barcelona parish priest wandered crazy for days before being asked for his union card. “What need have I of cards, I am the priest of St. Just,” he unwisely remarked.[75]

Obviously, the degree of tyranny involved in the above would justify resistance.

Second, the response must be proportional to the degree of tyranny involved with due application to legal methods that are available to remedy it:

The conditions of lawful self-defense are substantially the same in the case of resistance to individual private aggression and that of aggression by the government. Now, in the former case, a man cannot kill another in self-defense if he can escape the aggression in any other way. So also if a tyrannical government may be brought to reason by constitutional means it has a right to be brought to reason by constitutional means. In this connection it occurs to us also to remark that under modern conditions it is not always easy to imagine a set of circumstances which would justify a people in offering armed resistance to the Crown even in case of oppression. In most civilized countries the people are given by the constitution full and effective means for calling an oppressive government to account, and of speedily rendering it impotent for evil. In a Republic, president and government can be rejected at the polls: in monarchies that are subject to the system of Parliamentary government, like England, [redacted], Belgium, the real executive i.e. the Cabinet, can be made to resign; whilst in conservative monarchies the representatives of the people can make government impossible by refusing supplies. In all these cases, of course, tyranny may be possible, but it cannot be long-continued, and is generally not hopeless.[76] (emphasis added)

Fr. Haring observes that passive resistance is one of the best means available. An example of this would be a general strike. This is an especially attractive alternative as it involves no break in the chain of legal continuancy:

Passive resistance (the non-violent and unbroken refusal to obey the law) is one of the most potent means to be used against an unjust regime. However, it may be used even against a lawful government when it imposes “laws” which are unjust and requires performance of evil acts. All the more is passive resistance permitted in opposition to an essentially evil regime.[77] (emphasis added)

In respect to monarchies, it should be mentioned that the Pope possesses certain indirect spiritual powers over Catholic monarchs due to their respect for his spiritual power (conveyed in the Petrine Texts) of “binding and loosing” in matters of conscience.

A variant of this occurred in Argentina in 1955 when the Argentine dictator Peron was excommunicated due to the overwhelming nature of his crimes. His position became completely untenable in that Catholic country, where the constitution states that the President must be a Catholic, and he was soon overthrown.

In both Catholic and non-Catholic monarchies, a situation of tyranny could be handled by appealing to other members of the royal family to have the monarch declared incompetent and a regency declared.

Third, before even the legitimate right of resistance is exercised, there must be the reasonable hope that it will be effective to remove the tyranny. The rule given by St. Thomas Aquinas is that actions may be taken to remove the tyranny “unless indeed the tyrant’s rule be disturbed so inordinately, that his subjects suffer greater harm from the consequent disturbance than from the tyrant’s government.”[78] Thus, it is observed, “There must be a hope of success, i.e. a hope that the tyranny exercised by government will be brought to an end, or at least that the beginnings of improvement may be effected.”[79]

Fourth, prior to the exercise of the legitimate right of resistance, serious consideration must be given to the type of government that will replace that of the tyrant. To paraphrase Scriptures there is no use in expelling one evil spirit if he is replaced by seven spirits more evil than himself. This is a very serious and weighty consideration that must be resolved before any action is taken. There will be both Communist and dictatorial parties that will attempt to take advantage of the situation to institute their own forms of tyranny. The Communist party is particularly dangerous as it thrives on revolutionary situations and will seize upon the actual existence of a tyranny to implement its own “dictatorship of the proletariat:”

In most countries there is a party known as the revolutionist party that would undertake to direct the people and compel them to rise in resistance for “the people’s good.” In most cases these revolutionary parties look to their own good only; but whether they do or not they have no right either to drive the people to resistance against their will, or to initiate resistance unsupported by the mass of the people. If the people are satisfied with the government or satisfied to wait and to seek redress by constitutional endeavour (and they should do so if such means offers a hope of success) then no party has any right to resort to any other means much less to compel the people to rise.[80] (emphasis added)

From what has been demonstrated concerning the natural constitution of the nation, formed by the Providential guidance of the nation in the course of its history, it is self-evident that the new government should duplicate, as far as humanly possible, the natural constitution, which, as St. Thomas states, was violated by the sedition of the tyrant himself. Otherwise, the government will not take root in the nation as its legitimacy will always be suspect, and, accordingly, it will lack the stability needed by all governments. As an example, consider the terrific instability of France under all her republics, especially during the 13-year life of the Fourth Republic (1946-1959) where France had some 43 changes of governments!

Therefore, in a monarchy, a regency should be declared to exercise the powers of the king, and a person of the highest prestige possible should be sought to exercise the office of regent. This action is calculated to obtain acceptance from all quarters and to demonstrate to the nation and the international community that the removal of the tyrant was really the exercise of the legitimate right of resistance rather than an illegitimate rebellion. In a Catholic monarchy, the Pope should be petitioned for a bull declaring the tyrant (and other unsuitable persons in the line of succession) deposed and commanding the coronation of the next suitable person. For a Catholic nation, the action of the Pope is definitive and will eliminate any legal quibbles or succession disputes as to whether a formal abdication can be obtained against a person’s will or whether a person in the line of succession can be bypassed. In a non-Catholic monarchy, the strict natural law is applicable, and an unsuitable successor can be bypassed on the same theory under which the tyrant was deposed. The ratification of this action by the royal family should be effective to constitute the formal legal deposition of the tyrant and the legitimate succession and coronation of the next suitable person. (See the sub-chapter “Legal and Lawful Solutions to Succession Conflicts Provided under International Public Law” in Chapter VI of Volume II)

In a traditional republic, the leaders of the legitimate resistance should attempt to return the nation to its natural constitution as soon as reasonably possible. As in a monarchy, a person of the highest prestige in the nation should be sought to head the provisional government. A supreme court justice, a religious leader, or other national leader, would be particularly suitable who is highly respected and looked up to.

If the tyranny has been the result of the moral aberration of the President himself (as in the case of Richard Nixon) rather than a result of the psychological subversion of the nation through totalitarian propaganda (as in the case of Adolph Hitler, Juan Peron, or Salvador Allende), new elections should be called in accordance with the written constitution within a reasonable period after the public tumult over the removal of the tyrant has ceased. Otherwise the leaders of the legitimate resistance might be suspected of perpetuating themselves in power rather than acting for the common good.

However, where the tyrant has subverted the nation to its very core, infecting it with the cancer of his totalitarianism, it is morally legitimate under the natural law for the leaders of the resistance to rule until the last vestiges of totalitarianism are eliminated and the nation re-orientated in Christian (if it be such) and natural law principles. Obviously, a republic whose leaders are elected by the people cannot be successful if the people themselves have no understanding of their natural law duties, right reason, or Christian morality. This course of action is confirmed by Fr. Bernard Haring, whose authority as the unofficial theologian of Vatican II cannot be lightly dismissed by any responsible person:

Obviously we must exclude tyranny (or its most modern form, the totalitarian state) as totally unacceptable because it does not recognize any limits to its arbitrary power. However, there is reason to doubt whether a government which has withdrawn the democratic right of self-determination from the people because of great and obvious hazard of misuse through bad leadership can rightly be included among the typically totalitarian regimes. We have in mind a temporary suppression of these rights which – as far as can be humanly foreseen – would be used by the people to their own tragic undoing because of demagogic influences.[81]

The logic here is self-evident. There is no point in calling new elections if they will simply result in a new tyranny or the advent of a totalitarian party. This is admittedly contrary to Rousseau’s social contract theory of popular sovereignty, but, as has been demonstrated, the natural law rejects that completely. The natural law requires even a republic to exercise its powers in accordance with right reason and with respect to the limitations on the scope of its sovereignty imposed by natural law. Indeed, with respect to the representative principle in all modern forms of government, Fr. Haring observes, “But this does not mean that we may invoke the natural law in support of the thesis that all citizens by democratic and universal suffrage should have equal right in discharging this function. Only the really responsible citizens may actually claim this right.”[82] Accordingly, the people themselves must be prepared and trained to do this.

In this case, the leaders of the legitimate resistance have a serious obligation in conscience to see that this is done. They simply cannot continue themselves in power indefinitely. However, the period of their rule will be determined by the amount of time it takes to accomplish this task. If a totalitarian ideology has taken deep roots in the nation, it will take a longer time to accomplish this than if it is merely a cult of personality built around the late tyrant. Indeed, once the priests have been freed from the tyrant’s prisons, the best results can be obtained by enlisting their assistance.

Fifth, and finally, is the vexing question of who has the authority to determine the legitimacy of the exercise of the right to resistance. This is an extremely serious question that cannot be left to street rabble or university agitators, as it affects the well-being of the entire nation.

[The right of] Revolution can only be a right when it is clearly a duty. Severed from the higher idea of a divine [or moral and just] sanction, claimed as a right in itself, irrespective of any just [clear and unmistakable ethical] reason for its exercise, nothing can be more [obviously wrong, destructive of the good and benefit of society] . . . irrational, or impious.[83]

Hence, the best people in society must be the leaders. Jean J. Burlamaqui declared that the right to rebellion does not belong to:

. . . the vile populace or dregs of a country, not the cabal of a small number of seditious [conspiring] persons, but the greatest [the best] and most judicious part of the subjects of all orders in the kingdom. The tyranny, as we have also observed, must be notorious [obvious, even self-evident], and accompanied with the highest evidence.[84]

Fr. Haring observes that any determination in this regard must only be made by men of great prudence and tried and true judgment:

The decision regarding the justice of the active resistance and its exercise cannot be left in the hands of any and every private citizen. It may be made only by men of great competence and prudent judgment who according to all appearances can succeed in carrying out the resistance movement. These competent men are not only permitted, but in cases of extreme need of the people, obliged to make the decision even at very great personal risk.[85] (emphasis added)

In essence, then, this decision is to be made by the natural leaders of the nation. In a monarchy, this would include members of the aristocracy, who descend from the branch chieftains and original leaders of the nation. This, in fact, happened in England in 1688, when the House of Lords led the nation in deposing James II. In the United States the decision was undertaken by the most prominent men of the Colonies: Gen. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, Charles Carroll, George Wythe, Richard and Francis Lee, Edward Rutledge, and Thomas Jefferson. As military force will be required, the inclusion of military leaders is important. If the court system has not been subverted by the tyrant, justices from the Supreme Court should be included as an indictment of the breakdown of rule by law under the tyrant. The Chief Justice of the nation (if non-political) might be a good choice to head the provisional government as no partiality or political bias on his or her part will be suspected. A decision of this nature is so important, affecting the destiny of the entire nation that it should be made by those representing the larger and better portion of the various segments of the community. In so doing it can morally be considered as the judgment of the community as a whole against the tyrant.

Having disposed of the initial considerations, we may now turn to the conditions requisite for the exercise of the legitimate right of resistance. A vast consensus of natural law moralists, from St. Thomas Aquinas to Fr. Bernard Haring, agree that four essential conditions must be established: (1) a substantial, habitual, and intolerable tyranny; (2) failure of all legal means to correct the tyranny; (3) a reasonable probability of success; and (4) the judgment of the legitimacy of the resistance by the best men of the land acting on behalf of the nation. Due to his authority, Fr. Bernard Haring is cited for the best modern restatement of this doctrine:

a) Active resistance can be justified only in instances of gross abuse of civil authority. Examples: suppression of the most essential freedoms, the complete substitution of might for justice and right, direction of the economy entirely to parties or groups rather than to the common good. (b) Active resistance is permitted only after all peaceful measures have been exhausted. (c) There must be a well-founded hope and prospect that the active resistance actually will prove successful and that the evil conditions will not worsen rather than improve because of it. (d) The use of force must not exceed the measure essential for removal of the evil. On his point Pribilla cautions: “For safety sake it is better to exert greater force than is necessary rather than too little.”[86]

Due to the grave evils of tyranny and the difficulty of legitimately removing the same, and the danger of even worse revolutionary tyranny arising, Fr. Haring has some very pointed advice to offer:

For this very reason Christians are well advised to be concerned with the political order. Here too the principle is valid: principiis obsta, sero medicina paratur (Resist in the very beginning, correction comes too late). By all legal means the Christian should resist tyranny in its beginnings. . . .[87]

There is the old saying that, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” An early detection of potential tyranny can nip the beginnings of oppression and is the wisest action. If we do not learn from the past, we are condemned to repeat it and suffer the same great harm, anguish, and ruin of past societies.

Hence, it must be kept as a sacred commitment that no theory, no ideology, popular or not, whether Divine Right of Kings, Self-Determination, Socialism, Popular Sovereignty, Communism, Fascism, or extremist Islamic ideas justifies high treason, bloodshed, or violence. Only tyranny, the major protracted oppression of the people or genocide, can qualify, and, then, such a revolution must be orchestrated and intelligently run by the responsible people in a country. Disorderly vigilantic rebellions or the lawless efforts of revolutionaries (organized thugs) almost always create more misery, hurt, and anguish than the government suppression of freedom that they want to stop. The case against a government to justify a rebellion must be extremely solid and substantial and not left to unorganized confusion, sedition, and disobedience.

The Legitimate Provisional Government resulting from the Exercise of the Right of Resistance

Once the existence of a tyranny has been determined by the responsible natural leaders of the nation and legitimate resistance to it is established, an interesting result occurs. The legitimate sovereignty over the nation goes from the tyrant to the provisional government. The demonstration of this is to be found in the natural law relevant to sovereignty. Sovereignty has a necessary scope of authority, but its exercise is restricted within the limits of the natural law. It is moreover to be exercised for the advancement of the common good. The tyrant has severely violated both the natural law and the advancement of the common good. In essence, he has deposed himself by his criminal actions. He alone is to blame. Sovereignty must reside somewhere. It cannot remain in a vacuum. The tyrant has abdicated or abandoned the sovereignty of the nation by his actions.

The provisional government, established to resist the unlawful tyranny, has the best moral right to the exercise of sovereignty. Moreover, it is ready, willing, and able to do so. It may have possibly obtained the loyalty of the military. It might also have obtained a statement from the religious leaders of the nation as to its moral validity, as happened in the Spanish 1936-1939 crusade against Communism. At this point, the case in the provisional government’s favor becomes overwhelming. Right reason demands that the provisional government be recognized as the de jure and rightful government. The administration of the tyrant, steeped in crime and violence, becomes illegitimate.

International law, based on the natural law and the Christian civilization of Europe, should recognize this state of affairs, and it should recognize that the continued rule of the tyrant is contrary to the principles of natural law. Accordingly, diplomatic recognition ought to be given immediately to the new provisional government. The allies of the nation should immediately recognize the transfer of sovereignty and send aid to the provisional government. Continued alliance with the tyrant is odious and will eventually destroy the alliance.

Recognition should accord the new government credits to buy needed supplies on the international market. The credits and gold reserves of the tyrant deposited abroad should be transferred to the new government. The spirit of international law also demands that friendly states turn over to the new government monies stolen from the nation and deposited in private accounts for the personal benefit of the tyrant and his followers. In the case of many Latin American tyrants, such monies can amount to the equivalent of hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars. It is clearly stolen property and should be restored to the people of the nation via the provisional government.

If the tyrant, his accomplices, or members of a totalitarian party flee abroad, they should stand trial in a world court for crimes against humanity. It should be realized that if the deposed government is Communist, a cry will go up from Communist countries and their allies about the “persecution” of “political prisoners.” This is, of course, pure propaganda. They are no more “political prisoners” than were the Nazi war criminals.

In essence, the policy of international law should be to put the provisional government as much in the legal shoes of the tyrant as possible to promote peace and the establishment of a just world order. As with individuals, international justice begins with individual nations themselves. Only a world community, composed of just nations, can hope to build a stable world order to establish a legitimate world peace. Peace is not merely the absence of war. More fundamentally, it is predicated on the establishment of a just international social order. Tyrants everywhere, irrespective of their ideology, are the greatest single deterrent to this. Public international policy should, therefore, favor the deposition of tyrants and the doctrines of international law should be interpreted and applied to achieve this truly progressive and right-minded result.

However, in the words of Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, it must always be kept in mind that “. . . the whole body of the nation, have not a right to depose the sovereign . . . ,” if he is basically good – popularity has nothing to do with what is just and right.[88] In other words, “. . . they [the people] that are subjects to a monarch, cannot without his leave [his permission or free-will consent] cast off monarchy. . . . If they depose him, they take [that is, wrongfully rob or steal] from him that which is his own, and so again it is injustice [a wrong or a violation].”[89] This is so serious an act of treason and injustice that Jean Jacques Burlamaqui emphatically wrote, “Whosoever . . . rises against the sovereign, or makes an attack upon his person or authority, renders himself manifestly guilty of the greatest crime, which a man can commit. . . .”[90] The “. . . will of the people [by referendum or revolt, etc.], without the [willing, not coerced or forced] consent of the prince [the rightful monarch or his successor], cannot deprive his children. . . [or take away their lawful or de jure right to rule].”[91] In addition, as Textor taught, “. . . Subjects are not allowed to use these means [violence or the coercive force of a referendum] against their [lawful] King or Prince. . . .”[92] In other words, “The king . . . cannot be [lawfully] deprived of his sovereignty, acquired legitimately, unless he lapses into tyranny” and will not relent.[93] In review:

According to Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, no People have a right to change its Government, so long as it is well administered [is not oppressive]. Both Kings and Nobles have become possessed of legitimate rights, of which no People may dispossess them, until by misrule, unjust and illegal oppression, their vested rights shall have been forfeited. And other States, near or remote, have no right in any shape or manner to interfere.[94] (emphasis added)

Revolutionaries often give out the false hope (really a fantasy) that the revolution will end all problems and transform humanity, or human nature, resulting in endless good. Therefore, because the revolution will supposedly do so much endless good, “the end justifies the means.” However, the result of revolution is nearly always depravity, violence, degradation, torture, and the victimization of the whole nation into a horrific cauldron of anguish, death, and bloodshed. Yet in the end, mankind is generally not any different as a result of the revolution. They are not transformed. They have not transcended into a utopian society. Instead of the pie in the sky, great and horrible wrongs have been perpetrated on the people. Revolution generally is not heroism, but brutality – a crime against law and order and the general good of the nation. It is not to be taken lightly.

Natural Law, Prescription and Sovereignty

Sovereignty is not magical or supernatural, it is simply a secular legal concept, albeit one of the most important and significant legal concepts on earth. But it is still “. . . a purely secular form of authority residing in a dynasty’s [or republic’s] exclusive prescriptive right to rule.”[95] As high as it is, it is not above the law.

For the most part, sovereignty is only subject to the law that it accepts and willingly complies with, whether it is on a domestic or international level. However, there is one major exception; there is one law so fundamentally rooted in the highest law on earth (the law of nature) that it is above what, otherwise, is the foremost authority on earth, prescription is one of those higher laws. That is, what can legally and lawfully create legitimate internal legal sovereignty can also destroy it. While minor laws can give or take property from individuals and their families. Prescription has the unique distinction of being the only natural law on earth that creates the original and lasting right of being a legitimate and lawful established, sovereign entity. It also has the distinction of being the only law with the power and jurisdiction to completely destroy this extraordinary and exclusive right on an internal de jure level. That is, even though sovereignty is the highest, the most supreme, and the ultimate authority right in a territory as an established legal concept, it is still subject to a higher and greater law – the law of all ages, of which prescription is a part.

The Law of Nature is the Highest and Most Important Law on Earth and is Binding on All Countries Whether Reigning or Non-Territorial

As Sir William Blackstone wrote:

[A]s it is impossible for the whole race of mankind to be united in one great society, they must necessarily divide into many; and to form separate states, commonwealths and nations; entirely independent of each other, and yet liable to a mutual intercourse. Hence arises a third law to regulate this mutual intercourse, called “the law of nations;” which, as none of these states will acknowledge a superiority in the other, cannot be dictated by either; but depends upon the rules of natural law, or upon mutual compacts, treaties, leagues and agreements between these several communities.[96]

Within this law, there are three different kinds of law, the “Necessary Law of Nations,” the “Arbitrary Law,” and the “Voluntary Law of Nations.” Emerich de Vattel declared that, “. . . the Necessary Law of Nations consists in the application of the Law of Nature to States, and is immutable, as being founded on the nature of things, and in particular on the nature of man. . . .”[97]

The law of nature begins with the view . . . that all things behaved according to the laws of their own being. Implanted in the acorn was the propensity to become an oak. Everything, animate or inanimate, performed its function, or grew and developed, according to a natural law inherent within it. . . . The law of nature was the animating principle or soul of the universe. But more than this: it was revealed to man as a guide. . . . He had only to think for himself: Reason would then show him what was right, and in what direction he ought to move. It would reveal to him some part of the law of nature that was the law of his own being.[98]

Samuel Pufendorf explained that this law is the

. . . most general and universal rule of human action, to which every man is obliged to conform, as he is a reasonable creature. To this rule custom hath given the name of Natural Law, and we may call it likewise the Law Universal or Perpetual, the former in regard that it binds the whole body of the human race, the latter because it is not subject to change, which is the disadvantage of Positive Laws.[99]

One extremely important fundamental principle of this higher law was expressed by Sir Hersch Lauterpacht (1897-1960), a former judge of the International Court of Justice, when he declared:

. . . It is a general principle that legislation, unless it specifically provides to the contrary or unless irresistible considerations of justice so require, is not retroactive. This is not a principle confined to the field of criminal law [as some have felt -- it is a universal law of justice].[100] (emphasis added)

In the Island of Palmos Case, Judge Huber discussed the doctrine of intertemporal law. Essentially, all this means is that the law to be applied to a particular dispute is the law in existence at the time the dispute is to be settled – the critical date. So, if the critical date is 1898, the dispute is to be decided by reference to the rules of international law existing at that date.[101]

The fact that retroactive laws can so easily be abused makes them inappropriate and a danger to the ideals, principles, and practice of justice. Regarding justice and equity in the law of nations:

It can now be regarded as an established principle of international law that in such cases the situation in question must be appraised, and the treaty interpreted, in the light of the rules of international law as they existed at the time, and not as they exist today. In other words, it is not permissible to import into the legal evaluation of a previously existing situation, or of an old treaty, doctrines of modern law that did not exist or were not accepted at the time, and only resulted from subsequent development or evolution of international law.[102] (emphasis added)

This means that neither the rules that allow for the prescriptive transfer nor the maintenance of rightful sovereignty claims by the former government can be judged by current law. To do otherwise is to violate what is just. It is “. . . not workable in practice or acceptable in theory,” because it does not “establish stability and finality” or that certainty that helps countries and decision-makers feel confident in the future.[103] That is, if “. . . each states title to its territory must be reassessed according to [new and unexpected] changes [in international law]. . . . [It would be] clearly unacceptable. . . . The effect of such a doctrine would be to encourage spurious claims and to foster widespread uncertainty as to title to territory.”[104]

For example, “At one time title acquired by conquest and annexation was acceptable, that is of course not true today.”[105] If this modern 20th-century law was applied to the past, in other words, if it was retroactive or made into an ex post facto law, then all past titles created by conquest would now be void as the modern law would nullify all past circumstances involving conquest.

. . . Carried to its logical [absurd] conclusion, this . . . would mean North America would have to be handed back to the [American] Indians, and the English would have to hand England back to the Welsh.[106]

No country could feel safe or secure in its right to rule if modern law changes applied to the past. They would be at the mercy of every new whim or political machination contrived. Hence, it is not only just, but of great practical value that “. . . a juridical fact must be appreciated in the light of the law contemporary with it,”[107] It is not to be judged by modern law, but by the law that was in force at the time.[108] All cases, therefore, must be “. . . analysed in terms of the terms of international law, as they existed at the relevant point in time. This . . . cannot be disputed.”[109] It is just and sure.

For example, consider the addition of a new requirement for prescription, which some scholars would like to include. What if it was insisted upon that to maintain their legal rights, a non-territorial sovereign must appeal to a modern tribunal; as it would make prescriptive transfer of internal sovereignty to the usurper or possessor much easier? However, such a change in law, would make it easier for deposed royal houses and exiled governments to be legally blotted out of existence. Would this be fair or just, or would it be to add insult to injury?

The dispossessed are already on the losing side of the law, as they already are provided with little or no legal remedies for their plight. They were already unjustly and wrongfully removed by sedition and/or treachery. Making it harder, or even impossible, for them to keep their lawful and just sovereignty rights alive, would be adding a greater injury to what they have already suffered. Fairness and equity would be diminished if the dispossessed were forced to take their cases to an international tribunal who generally, as a matter of consistent policy, favor the possessor. And instead of leaving the deposed with their rights intact the tribunal would nullify them. In other words, this would make it impossible for the deposed to maintain their claims according to the ageless universal laws of prescription, which would be to figuratively throw them under a bus. It would destroy what little, although valid and legitimate, rights they had left. Such a lopsided situation is obviously out-of-balance and does not reflect the higher requirement of equity or the obligation to champion and uphold what is morally and ethically right in the world.

Ex post facto laws are not new; they are as old as the oldest tyranny. They are, and have always been, the favorite expedient of despots for criminalizing an entire population. Castro’s show trials in 1959, which killed 15,000 Cubans by firing squad, more than died of natural causes in the entire year, were based on ex post facto laws.[110]

Laws, to be valid, must be fundamentally just, and, if they are not just, they are null and void and, therefore, unenforceable under natural law. Retroactive laws, applying new requirements to the past, as suggested above, can thus be an act of abuse or misconduct. Intertemporal law therefore asks the important question of “. . . which century’s law is to be applied to determine the validity of title to territory?”[111] The answer is, “. . . the law in force at the time the right arises . . . .”[112] This is the law that should be used.

So not only does the idea of a new requirement for past prescriptive titles fail the test that “. . . the validity of an acquisition of territory depends on the law in force at the time of the alleged acquisition,”[113] but it is also in breach of the established principle that international courts of competent jurisdiction are to be completely voluntary. They cannot, therefore, be made mandatory when international law is based on the equality, independence, and supremacy of each sovereign entity.

The “Voluntary Law of Nations” or temporary laws created, changed, or altered in the 21st century are not binding, applicable or obligatory on the legal situations that existed in earlier years. The past cannot be held accountable, or be made responsible, for laws that did not exist in their day and time. However, natural law, or “the Necessary Law of Nations” being immutable, universal and binding in all ages and among all people are obligatory in the past, the present, and in the future. The ancient natural law of prescription is therefore essential and required in every applicable situation that has ever existed.

Vattel made it clear that “. . . the Law of Nations is originally no more than the Law of Nature applied to nations.”[114] It is the foundation or basis from which springs all just laws. He declared of his book:

In this work we are laying down the natural principles of the Law of Nations; we deduce them from nature itself; and what we call the voluntary Law of Nations consists in the rules of conduct, of external law, to which the natural law obliges Nations to consent; so that we rightly presume their consent, without seeking any record of it, for even if they had not given their consent, the Law of Nature supplies it, and gives it for them. Nations are not free in this matter to consent or not; the Nation which would refuse to consent would violate the common rights of all Nations.[115]

“. . . If you abolish the law of nature among them [among all people] you banish from among mankind at the same time the whole body politic, all authority, order and fellowship among them.”[116] In other words, everything right, everything good, beautiful and worthwhile is ruined without it. Everything that matters and makes life worth living is inseparably connected to the laws of our nature as human beings, which includes what is right and what is wrong. So is the law of nature universally binding and required of men? It is! Is it also a binding force required of all nations and all people, not just Europeans? The answer is again a resounding – Yes! “. . . All nations are equally bound by it. . . .”[117]

Natural law, according to [Samuel] Pufendorf, is that which is so exactly fitted to suit with the rational and social nature of man, that human kind cannot maintain an honest and peaceful fellowship without it.[118]

It is just that important. One could call it divine law because it is perfect, just, and fair, but:

As Hugo Grotius pointed out in the early seventeenth century, even if there was no God, or if God was unreasonable or evil, natural law would still have moral force, and men would still spontaneously back it with physical force [sacrificing their very lives for it because it is self-evident and true].[119]

Right and wrong do exist. Grotius’s works, along with the other fathers of international law, such as, Vattel, Pufendorf, etc., during a dark and horrid time of constant war and suffering, proclaimed the following:

. . . gradually wrought a most salutary change in the practical intercourse of nations in the favor of humanity and justice. . . . [In fact] it would be difficult to name any class of writers which have contributed more to promote the progress of civilization than “. . . these illustrious authors – these friends of human nature – these kind instructors of human errors and frailties – these benevolent spirits who held up the torch of science [justice and right] to a benighted world.”[120]

They taught natural law rules and basic principles. They recognized that a second lesser law exist called the “Voluntary Law,” which is gleaned from customs and is called “temperamentum” or temporary law, because it is “. . . shifting and changeable with the changing manners, fashions, creeds, and customs [of the people].”[121] The third type of law is the “Arbitrary Law,” which comes from treaties, agreements, and promises. The “Necessary Law of Nations” is the highest, because it is nothing short of being a law for all times and all people. It is the most sacred and supreme law on earth. It is also the highest law of justice and fairness, being built on the principles of equity. It is inherent in the structure of the whole universe or all creation.[122] But like any buried treasure, it must be discovered, not by shovels, but by “right reasoning.” It is universal and inherent in the heart and soul or nature of man. Therefore, it is binding on all humanity to protect life, freedom, property, and liberty. It deals with morality and what is just, right or innately good. All law, to be valid and legitimate, must be built on the ideals and principles of natural law.

Lord Brougham (1778–1868), a British statesman who became Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, explained:

There is a law above all enactments of human codes – the same throughout the world – the same in all times – it is the law written by the finger of God upon the heart of man.[123]

There are laws created by man, and there is natural law. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), considered to have been one of greatest statesmen and philosophers of ancient Rome, wrote of laws created by man based upon wrong or faulty reasoning. He declared:

What of the many deadly, the many pestilential statutes which nations put in force? These no more deserve to be called laws than the rules a band of robbers might pass in their assembly. For if ignorant and unskillful men have prescribed deadly poisons instead of healing drugs, these cannot possibly be called physicians’ prescriptions; neither in a nation can a statute of any sort be called a law, even though the nation, in spite of being a ruinous regulation, has accepted it.[124]

[T]he most foolish notion of all is the belief that everything is just which is found in the customs or laws of nations. . . . But if the principles of Justice were founded on the decrees of peoples, the edicts of princes, or the decisions of judges, then Justice would sanction robbery and adultery and forgery of wills, [even if] these acts were approved by the votes or decrees of the populace.[125]

Although, one definition of prescription states that it is “. . . a right or title to anything, grounded upon a continued possession of it beyond the memory of man,” this is not fully true.[126] For example, slavery, genocide, or any other similar kinds of savagery are absolute wrongs no matter how long they are practiced. “Long-usage does not prove [any wretched] practice to be [legally] rightful. On the contrary, ‘a hundred years of wrong makes not one hour of right. . . .’”[127] Only what is good, right, wholesome, and benevolent is true law and can be made fully legitimate with time. For whatever is truly just is already legitimate, for it is part of the natural law. Prescription, then, is only legitimate for what is truly honorable, just, and true.

Man’s laws, when they are not compatible with the laws of nature, are invalid. The laws of nature are the most essential of all laws, because they are universal, eternal, and indispensable to the peace and well-being of all nations. Government is the tool or mechanism to enforce sound laws, and it can therefore be used to make life honorable and good for all people. It is not something to be trifled with or used to smother human freedom and dignity by those who foster police states and coercion. It is a most sacred establishment instituted for the good and benefit of mankind, not an apparatus for oppression. All societies would quickly degenerate and come to ruin without a good, honest government working to maintain proper law and order. As Christian Wolff declared, “. . . nature herself has established society among men and binds them to preserve it. . . . This obligation, as coming from the law of nature, is necessary and immutable. . .” and an important responsibility.[128] “Government is [after all] . . . the only means available to make peaceful human coexistence possible.”[129] As such:

. . . Governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them, both in making laws and administering them, for the good and safety of society. . . .

. . . All men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, which protected in their inherent and inalienable rights . . . and that sedition and rebellion are unbecoming every citizen thus protected, and should be punished accordingly. . .[130]

No country is perfect, but:

If the public safety be provided, liberty and propriety secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of the nation advanced, the [fundamental] ends of government are accomplished. . . .[131]

But we must have good-hearted people in the world to have good government, because:

. . . Government can worthily perform its function only when obedience is enshrined in the hearts of the governed, that laws are vain without loyalty, was the truth for which the men of the seventeenth century were contending, when they asserted that all resistance was damnable.[132]

Society is made up of people, and families are the brick and mortar that holds everything together to guide children to become men and women of honor, virtue, and truth. As Benjamin Franklin wrote:

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.[133]

But when society mocks virtue, laughs at it, and promotes the ideals of the gutter, we become hard-pressed to develop beneficial individuals and a great society. C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) commented on the results of hypocrites in the midst. He wrote:

We make men without chests [without heart or cherished values] and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour [and goodness] and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.[134]

Civilization cannot flourish when it is built on filth or moral decay. Each individual has the responsibility to choose a higher path for change to take place. Nations that do not teach values and ideals as a prized and important civic duty each individual owes to God and county choose a downward road. People do not magically become men of integrity. The higher law is a law of individual responsibility; that is:

Each individual member of human society is under a moral necessity – that is, owes the duty by the rational exercise of his will – to conform to the universal moral order by the habitual observance of all the rules of morality and the practice of those virtues which constitute the ideal excellence of life and character; and is therefore not only entitled, but required by the constitution of his nature, to employ the means necessary to enable him to perform that duty. . . . The perfection of civil order . . . consists in the largest liberty of individual action compatible with the equal liberty of all others. . . .[135]

The higher law is also a law of nations:

[Although sovereign nations are independent and recognize no superior authority or power in ruling over them] there is . . . a supreme law [a higher law] which binds and restrains the sovereignty of individual states. It is the law of nations, or international law. It consists of a body of rules regulating the relative rights and duties of independent nations . . . demanded by the progressive advancement of human society. It is the application of the right reason and [the] cultivated conscience of mankind [that is so important]. . . .[136]

The future is dependent on right rule, and right rule is dependent on correct principles – “The Necessary Law of Nations.” Prescription or usucaption, which much of this book has and the next volume will discuss in greater detail, is part of this higher law. Christian Wolff declared unequivocally:

Usucaption [ordinary prescription] belongs to natural law. [And it] has place among the nations [internationally]. . . . Immemorial prescription [also] belongs to the law of nature.[137]

The law of nations will be addressed in the next volume as it relates most particularly to dispossessed sovereignty, which includes deposed and exiled governments and dethroned royal houses.

[1] “A Humanist Manifesto,” The Humanist, vol. 13, no. 2, May-June 1953.

[2] New Catholic Encyclopedia, “Secular Humanism,” February 1967.

[3] Heinrich A. Rommen, The State in Catholic Thought, 1945, pp. 600-601.

[4] Ibid., p. 361.

[5] Ibid., pp. 364-365.

[6] Ibid., p. 601.

[7] Ibid., pp. 365-366.

[8] Ray Cotton, “Morality Apart From God: Is It Possible?,” 2011: http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/god-ethi.html.

[9] Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, vol. 1, 1837, p. 490.

[10] Ibid., p. 221.

[11] Fr. Heribert Jone, Moral Theology, 1959, §§ 57-58, pp. 23-25.

[12] University of Miami. “Religion May Have Evolved Because Of Its Ability To Help People Exercise Self-Control,” Science Daily, vol. 1, January 2009.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Robert H. Bork as quoted in the Preface for the book Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with American, [1983] 1990, p. xvii.

[16] Ray Cotton, “Morality Apart From God: Is It Possible?,” 2011: http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/god-ethi.html.

[17] Congressional Record, vol. 147, Pt. 4, April 11, 2002, p. 4357.

[18] Under the Egaliterian principles of 1789, the son of the rich or middle class man may be de jure the juridical equal of the son of the proletarian, but de facto in capitalism he is a nobleman through his inherited economic (though not legal) privileges. Under the concept of progress, Egalitarianism demands that economic privileges must also be abolished. This accomplished in’ state socialism where everyone is equal de facto as well as de jure. Egalitarianism thus demands that society must descend to its lowest common denominator to achieve the ideals of 1789.

[19] Fr. John A. Ryan, Catholic Principles of Politics, 1948, p. 115.

[20] John Noble, I Found God in Soviet Russia, 1959, pp. 29-30.

[21] Ibid., pp. 116-117.

[22] “Quotes on Liberty and Virtue,” 2011: http://www.liberty1.org/virtue.htm.

[23] Richard L. Evans, From Within These Walls, 1959, p. 191.

[24] George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor , vol. 30, 1932, p. 432.

[25] Fr. John A. Ryan, Catholic Principles of Politics, 1948, pp. 161-162.

[26] John Augustine Ryan and Francis Joseph Boland, Catholic Principles of Politics, rev. ed., 1940, p. 162.

[27] Libertas Praestantissimum, no. 16, p. 176.

[28] Fr. John A. Ryan, Catholic Principles of Politics, 1948, p. 564.

[29] Ibid., p. 332.

[30] Henry Edward Manning, Miscellanies and Independence of the Holy See, 1877, pp. 852-853.

[31] Heinrich A. Rommen, The State in Catholic Thought, 1945, pp. 498-499.

[32] Maria Lopez Villalba, “Balkanizing the French Revolution,” Greece and the Balkans, 2003, p. 153.

[33] Stephen M. R. Covey and Rebecca R. Merrill, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything, 2006, p. xxiv.

[34] William Barrows, The Boston Review, W. Barrows, E. P. Marvin, J. C. Bodwell, and J. T. Tucker, eds., vol. 6, no. 34, 1866, p. 500.

[35] Heinrich A. Rommen, The State in Catholic Thought, 1945, pp. 565-566.

[36] Émile Bourgeois, History of Modern France, 1815-1913, E. G. Prothero, ed., vol. 1, 1919, p. 356.

[37] Heinrich A. Rommen, The State in Catholic Thought, 1945, pp. 487-488.

[38] Joe Turtel, “To all you fuzzy socialists out there,” October 29, 2009, NewsWithViews.com: http://www.newswithviews.com/Turtel/joel162.htm.

[39] Rudolph Joseph Rummel, Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917, 1990; and Rudolph Joseph Rummel, China’s Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900, 1991.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Axel Merk, Sustainable Wealth, 2010, p. 232.

[43] Dr. Thomas Sowell quoted in Janie Johnson, Don’t Take My Lemonade, 2010, p. 137.

[44] Joseph Marie, Count de Maistre, Considerations sur la France, 1936, p. 59.

[45] William Ebenstein, Great Political Thinker, 1960, p. 133.

[46] Edmund Burke, Selections from the Speeches And Writings of Edmund Burke, 2006, p. 137.

[47] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part 2, vol. 1, issue 3, Q.100 Art.5, 1915, p. 124.

[48] Michael Canon Cronin, The Science of Ethics, vol. 2, 1929, pp. 538-539.

[49] Ibid., pp. 539-540.

[50] Ibid., p. 540.

[51] Fr. Bernard Haring, C.S.S.R., The Law of Christ, vol. 3, 1966, p. 150.

[52] Michael Canon Cronin, The Science of Ethics, vol. 2, 1929, p. 541.

[53] Tom Lanceford, Communism, 2007, p. 48.

[54] Antony St. Peter, The Greatest Quotations of all Time, 2010, p. 138.

[55] Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, 1802, p. 328.

[56] Jean J. Burlamaqui, The Principles of Politic Law, vol. 2, part 2, chapter 6, no.8.

[57] Thomas Brown, Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. 2, 1826, pp. 413-414.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, The Principles of Natural and Political Law, Part 2, chapter 6, no. 20, 1807, p. 93.

[60] Ibid., no. 19.

[61] Ibid., no. 22.

[62] Juan de Mariana, De Rege et Regis Institutione, 1599 as quoted in “Rights in Government, etc.,” The Dublin Review, vol. 50, August 1861, pp. 419-420.

[63] James Tyrrell, “Diaologue XIII, Bibliotheca Politica: or, an Enquiry into the Ancient Constitution of the English Government, 2nd ed., 1727, p. 676.

[64] Peter Wentworth (1529-1596), a prominent member of the Parliament of England, as quoted in J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the 16th Century, 2013, p. 267.

[65] John Machale, The Evidences and Doctrines of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., 1842, p. 310.

[66] Warren L. McFerran, The Principles of Constitutional Government, 2005, p. 32.

[67] Michael Canon Cronin, The Science of Ethics, vol. 2, 1929, p. 541.

[68] reference unknown.

[69] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, vol. 3, part 2, 2nd ed., Q. 42, Art. 2, Obj. 3, 2007.

[70] Ibid., 1st part of part 2, Q. 105. Art. 1, Obj. 2, 1915, p. 252.

[71] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part 2 of 1st part, Q. 105. Art. 2, Obj. 5, 1915, p. 252.

[72] Ibid., 1st part of part ,. Q. 105. Art. 1.

[73] Fr. Bernard Haring, C.S.S.R., The Law of Christ, vol. 3, 1966, p. 149.

[74] Michael Canon Cronin, The Science of Ethics, vol. 2, 1929, p. 543.

[75] Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 1961, pp. 172-175.

[76] Op.cit., Michael Canon Cronin.

[77] Op.cit., Fr. Bernard Haring, p. 150.

[78] James Brown Scott, Law, the State, and the International Community, 2003, p. 217.

[79] Ibid.

[80] St. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, De potestate Papae in rebus temp., chap. 3 quoted in Michael Canon Cronin, The Science of Ethics, vol. 2, 1929, pp. 543-544.

[81] Op.cit., Fr. Bernard Haring, p. 119.

[82] Ibid.

[83] Taylor Lewis, “Religion and the State,” The Princeton Review, vol. 3, March 1829, p. 244.

[84] Jean J. Burlamaqui, The Principles of Natural and Politic Law, Book 2, part 2, chapter 6, no. 29.

[85] Ibid., p. 152.

[86] Ibid., pp. 151-152.

[87] Ibid., p. 152.

[88] Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, The Principles of Natural and Political Law, vol. 2, chapter 6, no. 5.

[89] Thomas Hobbes, “Hobbes’s Leviathan” Harrington’s Oceana Famous Pamphlets. (A.D. 1644 to A.D 1785, chapter 18, 1889, p. 85.

[90] Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, The Principles of Natural and Political Law, vol. 2, chapter 6, no. 3.

[91] Ibid., chapter 4, no. 11.

[92] Johann Wolfgang Textor, Synopsis of the Law of Nations, vol. 2, 1680, p. 88.

[93] A. Robert Lauer, Tyranicide and Drama, 1987, p. 66.

[94] John Stephen Wright & John Holmes Agnew, Citizenship Sovereignty, 1883, p. 180: Note: “Prescription [provides that a right] . . . be created and acquired, whilst at the same time the right of the former owner of title is extinguished.” (Robert Yewdall Jennings, The Acquisition of Territory in International Law, 1963, p.21).

[95] Robert Jackson, Sovereignty: The Evolution of an Idea, 2007, p. 62.

[96] Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1, George Sharswood, ed., 1860, p. 42.

[97] Thomas Joseph Lawrence, ed., Documents Illustrative of International Law, 1914, p. 11.

[98] Henry Phelps Brown, Egalitarianism and the Generation of Inequality, 1991, p. 22.

[99] Samuel Puffendorf, De Jure Natures et Gentium, Book. 2, chapter 3, no. 1.

[100] Hersch Lauterpacht, “Nationality of Denationalized Persons,” Jewish Yearbook of International Law, 1948, p. 164.

[101] Martin Dixon, Textbook on International Law, 6th ed., 2007, p. 160.

[102] Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, “The Law and Procedure of the International Court of Justice,” British Yearbook of International Law, vol. 30, no. 1, 1953, p. 5.

[103] Martin Dixon, Textbook on Internaitonal Law, 6th ed., 2007, p. 160.

[104] Ibid.

[105] John O’Brien, International Law, 2001, p. 216.

[106] Michael Akehurst, A Modern Introduction to International Law, 4th ed., 1982, p. 150.

[107] Judge C. J. Huber in the Island of Palmos Case as quoted in Sir Ian McTaggart Sinclair, The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 2nd ed., 1984, p. 139.

[108] “The principle of legality is the legal ideal that requires all law to be clear, ascertainable and non-retrospective. It requires decision makers to resolve disputes by applying legal rules that have been declared beforehand, and not to alter the legal situation retrospectively by discretionary departures from established law.” (Lambert M Surhone, Mariam T Tennoe, and Susan F Henssonow, The Principle of Legality, 2010, p. 1)

[109] Matthew Carven, “Continuity of the Hawaiian Kingdom,” Hawaiian Journal of Law and Politics, vol. 1, Summer 2001, p. 519.

[110] Review of Cuban-American Blogs, 2013: http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com/2007/10/ex-post-facto-laws-are-unconstitutional.html; Note: "The rule that the effect of an act is to be determined by the law of the time when it was done, not of the law of the time when the claim is made, is elementary and important. It is merely an aspect of the rule against retroactive laws, and to that extent may be regarded as a general principle of law. It is especially important in international law because of the length of the life of states. It is peculiarly apt to questions of title; though by no means confined to questions of title." (Robert Yewdall Jennings, The Acquisition of Territory in International Law, 1963, p. 28)

[111] Michael Akehurst, A Modern Introduction to International Law, 4th ed., 1982, p. 150.

[112] Ibid.

[113] Ibid.

[114] Thomas Joseph Lawrence, ed., Documents Illustrative of International Law, 1914, p. 10.

[115] Emerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations, vol. 3, Charles G. Fenwick, ed., Book 3, chapter 12, no. 192, 1916, p. 306.

[116] John Locke, Locke: Political Essays, Mark Goldie, ed., 1997, p. 120.

[117] Wheaton, Elements of International Law, 8th ed., Richard Henry Dana, Jr., ed., chapter 4, no.165, 1866, p. 240.

[118] Travers Twiss, The Law of Nations considered as Independent Political Communities, note 1, 1861, p. 111; Note: Marcus Tullius Cicero explained: “Right reason is in itself a law congenial to the feelings of nature, diffused among all men, uniform, eternal, commanding us to our duty, and prohibiting every violation of it,—one eternal and immortal law, which can neither be repealed nor derogated from, addressing itself to all nations and all ages, deriving its authority from the common sovereign of the universe, seeking no other law-giver and interpreter, carrying home its sanctions to every [heart]. . . .” (Denis Caulfield Heron , An Introduction to the History of Jurisprudence, 2005, p. 25).

[119] Fatih Balci, Politicization of Kurdish Question through Human Rights Discourse in Turkey, 2008, p. 30.

[120] Henry Wheaton, Elements of International Law, 8th ed., 1866, pp. xix-xx also quoting Patrick Henry in the last sentence about the law of nations.

[121] Sheldon Amos, The Science of Law, The International Scientific Series, vol. 10, 1885, p. 341.

[122] “Natural law, natural justice being a principle that is naturally applicable and adequate to the rightful settlement of every possible controversy [is] . . . an immutable principle, one that is always and everywhere the same, in all ages and nations. . . .” (Murray N. Rothbard, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought: The Complete Edition, 1965-1968, 2007, p. 63).

[123] Ibid., p. 26.

[124] Marcus Tullius Cicero, “Laws: Book II,” The Great Legal Philosophies: Selected Readings in Jurisprudence, Clarence Morris, ed., 1959, p. 51.

[125] Ibid., “Laws: Book I,” pp. 47-48.

[126] George Crabb, Universal Technological Dictionary, “Prescription,” 1823.

[127] Fritz Kern, Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages, S. B. Chimes, trans., 1956, p. 150.

[128] Christian Wolff, Jus Gentium Methodo Scientifica Pertractatum: The Translation, vol. 2 [1764], Joseph H. Drake, trans., no. 7, 1935, p. 11.

[129] Ludwig Von Mises, Liberty and Property, 2009, p. 35.

[130] Ezra Taft Benson, “The Proper Role of Government,” Robert D. Sr. Gorgoglione, Essays on Foundations of American Constitutional Government, Robert D. Sr. Gorgoglione, ed., 2010, p. 511 and D&C 134: 1-2, 5.

[131] Algernon Sidney, Discourses on Government, vol. 3, 1805, p. 146.

[132] John Neville Figgis, The Theory of the Divine Right of Kings, 1896, p. 263 and William Laud, The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, D.D., vol. 1, William Scott, ed., p. 112.

[133] Neilson Kite and Frances Kay, Understanding Emotional Intelligence: Strategies for Boosting Your EQ and Using it in the Workplace, 2012, p. 59.

[134] Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life & Works, 1996, p. 333.

[135] Stanley Matthews, “Jurisprudence, “ Johnson’s (Revised) Universal Cyclopaedia: A Scientific and Popular Treasury of Useful Knowledge, vol. 4, Frederick A. P. Barnard and Arnold Guyot, eds., 1886, p. 533.

[136] Ibid.

[137] Christian Wolff (Freiherr von), Jus Gentium Methodo Scientifica Pertractatum, [1764] vol. 2, 1934, no. 360-361, p. 185-186.

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