 Hello, everyone. Dylan Schumacher, civil defense. And today we are going to talk about the legitimacy of government. When does a government become an illegitimate government? What is an illegitimate government? What does that actually mean? I know there are a variety of angles that you could come at that question with. Our friends in the extreme libertarianism anarchism side of the house would say, well, it's always illegitimate. I think that's complete trash, but that's not what this video is about. So I'm going to assume that there is an illegitimate form of government of some sort. If you don't believe that well, then this video probably isn't for you. The next question then is what makes the government legitimate? Or the question I'm asking today is then what makes it illegitimate, right? Assuming there are legitimate forms of government, at some point can a government itself become illegitimate? I think the fairly obvious answer to that is yes, we can all think of illegitimate or evil governments throughout history. Germany under Hitler, for example, the current Chinese government, the current North Korean government, right? We would argue those are to some degree another illegitimate or at least bad governments. Russia under Stalin, you know, these examples where the government itself has perpetrated deep atrocities against its people. Surely if there is an illegitimate or bad evil government, I'm going to kind of conflate all those terms. Surely if there is such a thing as illegitimate governments, those are it, right? That is it. Can a government be illegitimate before it gets there? And I think that's a question worth asking. Is there a point where a government crosses the line into being an illegitimate government before it gets to the deep atrocities level stuff? I think the answer to that is yes. The common answer in America is that a government is illegitimate when it is no longer governed by consent. If you ask where I'm getting that from, well, I'm getting that from the Declaration of Independence, right? When the people are no longer governed by a government that's governed by consent, then it's the duty in the right of the people to throw that government off. That's in the founding document of our nation. And I think that's a pretty good answer in general. You can get into, well, what does that mean? What does consent of the government mean? And you can go down some rabbit trails and some philosophies there, but I'm not interested in doing that right now. I would pull the answer from the Bible. In the Letter to the Romans by Paul in chapter 13 verse 4, he writes about how the government's job is to punish evil and reward good. Punish evil and reward good. That's the job of a government and a good government does that and a bad government doesn't. And so certainly there are examples we can all think of in history where governments no longer rewarded good and punished evil. Instead, they started to swap the two where they would reward evil and punish good. And every government in history that you can think of that you can think, man, that was a really bad government. You would be able to point to it and say, aha, that's it. They did that. That's where they were rewarding evil and punishing good. For example, the most obvious, the easiest answer is the Germany in the 1930s under Hitler. You have them punishing good. So for example, if you were to hide Jews in your house and they would come around and they would find out that you're hiding these people because you don't want them to get sent to camps just because of who they are. So they would die. You would be punished for that. You'd be punished for doing a good thing of trying to save someone's life. And they would reward evil. If you would call and snitch on your neighbors or be like, oh, I saw someone down there. You should arrest them and get really stasi about it. Well, then of course they would reward that kind of evil behavior. All governments in history have to some degree or another not always rewarded good and not always punished evil, right? You can always point to some government and point to some part of it and be like, aha, right here, they were not punishing evil and they were not rewarding good. You can look at any government and do that. So I don't think that in order for a government to be legitimate, it has to 100% of the time reward good and punish evil. And if it even misses once, then it's no longer legitimate government. I don't think that's realistic. I don't think that's feasible. Human beings are just fallible, broken, sinful people. And so of course there are going to be examples where that doesn't happen, right? Corruption has existed in every single government in the history of mankind ever. And we'll continue to do so until Jesus comes back. So what's the line there? What does that mean? Because if every government we're saying at some point isn't going to reward good and isn't going to punish evil, but there's certainly a line between something like that and something like Nazi Germany where they are just doggedly, rabidly pursuing evil and not rewarding good. Surely there's a middle ground somewhere in there. And I think that there's some subjectivity to that, right? There's no objective standard I think that I know of that you're going to be able to necessarily measure that by it's not because there's no moral objective moral standard, there obviously is an objective moral standard. But because there's this gray area between governments that mostly reward good and mostly punish evil. And then it's a sliding scale down to the governments that mostly punish good and mostly reward evil. And somewhere in the middle there is where a government becomes illegitimate. Now imagine if you lived in a country that had an election stolen. That was pretty blatant, but the winner was won by the most popular votes in the history of that nation ever. And then that government goes on to impose lots of restrictions and edicts and declarations that go against the legitimate form of government that those people have practiced for hundreds of years and started to do things unilaterally in a nation where things were usually done by consensus and through elections. Imagine a nation like that where then they started to use the power of the state to crush the political opposition. If you can imagine a state like that, then you can imagine somewhere in there that that government would no longer be legitimate and would no longer be valid because at some point in there they will be using power to might make right, right? If I have the power I can do whatever I want, that's what that means. And they'll be using that to crush anyone who stands in their way to more power. And in the course of doing that it is inevitable that you will reward evil and that you will punish good. Because someone could stand up and say, wait a second, that's that's not how we do things in this nation. And that's not how we go about doing things here. We have never done them that way. And so we do this thing by consensus and elections and we have discussions and debate and we have different bodies that write laws and different bodies that execute laws and different bodies that judge laws. I mean just hypothetically speaking here, imagine there was a nation like that. And imagine that in there there was a person who rose up and said, no, I don't need these other branches of government. I can do whatever it is that I please. I don't need to do things the way we do things. I know we have this written piece of paper that has established how we do government in this nation, but I no longer will adhere to that. I'm just going to unilaterally decide and make laws by myself, even though I know I don't have that authority, but I'm going to do it anyway. Imagine what that would be like to live in a land like that where someone can just make laws on a whim and there's nothing you can do about it. I know this is all super hypothetical and you might have a tough time getting there, but just imagine with me that at some point that's not going to be a legitimate government. One, because it goes against the context of which that government was in place and it goes against the entire founding idea of how that nation is supposed to function. And two, like I said earlier, you're going to invariably in your quest for power, punish good and reward evil. And that, I think, somewhere in there is when a government no longer has the authority that they claim to have. Do brave deeds and endure.