The parent is likely echoing JFK: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Here are some things that have made peaceful revolution seem impossible:

- No ballot items for surveillance disclosures

- Loss of Udall, one of the only people representing the people on this issue in any real way in the Senate Intelligence Panel and in the legislative body

- Candidate Obama's campaign promises significantly divergent from President Obama's actions on civil liberties (and he was a constitutional law scholar, exactly what you think we would have needed)

- Habeas Corpus still suspended in America. The Constitution is a peace time document, but America is in perpetual war - in fact it is in wars that have no clear ending conditions (Terrorism and the threat of Terrorism will never end; the same is true of drugs)

- Political movements and protest groups responding to the surveillance state disrupted by federal agents

- Word games played with 'Congress was briefed' regarding Executive Branch activity, FISA courts proven to be rubber stamps, CIA willing to hack legislatures auditing them - intelligence arms seem to have escaped checks and balances.

- Hot button protests are being corralled away from protest zones where they are highly visible, either by police cages or by 'free speech zones' which are miles away, off the map and require you to register your intent to express free speech and get confirmation from the state

- Fusion Centers merging federal anti-terror tools with local law enforcement - ending non-surveilled local grass roots efforts to organize actions to express non-condoned political ideas

- Journalists and media outlets under routine surveillance and tap-and-trace (like the AP scandal this administration) to chill confidential informants that may bring stories from Washington to the news (and thus the people)

- The US government cuts access to press releases and interviews for those media outlets that don't 'play nice' with USG narratives or delay/kill/censor select stories (meta point: there's a reason journalism is called the Fourth Estate of American Politics)

- Every modern administrations feel it is reasonable to use their access to power to harass and sabotage political rivals (as is commonly done with the IRS)

- Political debates purposefully exclude third party candidates, appearing in front of the public and challenging 'enshired parties'

- Gilens and Page study out of Princeton and Cornell show high correlation between passed legislature and the demands of rich elite interests but poor correlation with national consensus

- The approval ("I feel represented") rating of the Congress is around 7% and the president's approval rating is around 50%

- The American people made it explicitly and extremely clear they were not interested in many things (such as military engagement in Syria) but could only manage to delay military action with a >75% national consensus on the issue for a couple of months

- The government lied repeatedly about the contents of the Snowden documents and passed faux legislation and even proposed bills to expand NSA authority as a response to public outcry

It would be easy to continue adding to the list. There are many reasons why it is hard to feel that peaceful revolution is possible.

So the parent feels, maybe, and maybe he said it a bit flippantly, that violent revolution is inevitable.

The final ingredient that must be added to the above witch's brew is large scale deprivation. We've still got more than enough bread and circuses to prevent mass unrest. But we sure are setting ourselves up for a bad time if and when the bread runs a little short. I'm not sure that the America of today could weather the rationing that took place during WWII or even the oil embargo of the 70s without a nation-wide Ferguson event.

On one hand, I'm OK with law makers ignoring public outcry. It is after all a republic, not a democracy. It's all of the lies, deceit, and outright criminal behavior that bothers me.

We need a new political party - The Guillotine Party. The slogan should be "Heads will roll". The party can bring an 'artistic display' of a real working guillotine to political rallies and chop watermelons, etc for demonstration.

The idea is to bring politicians, angry mobs, and guillotines together.

I don't think that violent revolution is inevitable, though-- too many American minds have been killed by patriotism or passive-ism for such a thing to happen.

I do think that there is substantial unrest and instability in our near future-- unrest and instability that could be avoided, but it would require concessions from a government content to try to fight its people before the people even show up.

"COINTELPRO never ended"

If voting is "useless" it makes it impossible to demand change since voting is how we enact change in a democracy.

You're either thinking of another country or have it wrong. The way change (legislation) gets enacted in the US is through lobbying.

No. We have a second amendment to maintain a "well regulated militia" to protect the state - not to make it easier to overthrow it.

The American militia were part of the revolution to overthrow the British government and the recognition of that is codified in the Second Amendment.

"Security" meant repelling foreign invaders and stopping insurrections, not starting them. To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions[4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_state

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_Stat...

I don't think the situation is bad enough to warrant violent revolt (yet).

The founding fathers were terrified of the people. This is why they created the electoral college - they didn't trust the general population to decide such an important decision. [They thought they had designed the system such that the college would never (or at least rarely) produce a winner and Congress would select the President]. Only the House was intended to be based on popular vote, senators were selected by state legislatures up until the 17th amendment was ratified in 1913.

If the founders didn't trust the people to select their own President or senators do you really think they trusted them with the decision of overthrowing the government?

John Adams

Hell, just read the opinions from DC v Heller.

And what they wrote was:

* a House of Representatives selected by the people

* a Senate selected by state legislatures

* two executives selected by Congress (with the remaining members of the executive branch at most needing consent from the portion of Congress not selected by the people)

* a judicial branch selected by the executive (again, requiring consent only from the Senate, who were not selected by the people)

So out of the entire government they gave the people the ability to select half of one branch. And while that one branch would select the President (and VP) it would have no voice in selecting the rest of the executive branch or any of the judicial. The ability to remove members of either the executive or judicial branch also went to the branch not selected by the people.

Sorry, but when I read the Constitution I don't see much "ability of citizens to maintain power over the government."

As for District of Columbia v. Heller the question was if the 2nd Amendment grants the right to bear arms for lawful purposes - violently overthrowing the government is most assuredly not lawful, regardless of who you want to quote while doing it.

Ensuring that states would have the ability to defend themselves in the against insurrection and invasion before the federal government -- which was, after all, not expected to have large standing forces -- could mobilize a response.