Sedition is defined as “overt conduct such as speech or organization which tends toward rebellion against the established order and includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority”.  It thus seems an essential tool for the implementation and operation of a real democracy, one free of the fetters of self-perpetuating oligarchies and thus, anathema to self-appointed elites while concurrently essential to populism in the sense that populism involves the real exercise of democracy notwithstanding institutional impediments.  Sedition would seem to have been the essence of Thomas Jefferson’s belief that the established order should be seriously challenged every generation.  However, Jefferson was great at intuitive libertarian truths albeit hypocritical as to their implementation.

Sedition was and is a sine qua non of the United States Declaration of Independence, of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and indeed, of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.  The United States and most so-called modern democratic systems were founded on the basis of sedition.  However, sedition is considered inherently illegal in every legal and constitutional system.  It is akin to heresy in organized religions and thus, as in almost everything having to do with the exercise of power over others, its proscription is an exercise in abject hypocrisy.

Sedition, “apparently the most essential tool for a libertarian society”: something on which to reflect as the United States and other so-called Western governments drift further and further away from libertarian democracy and closer and closer towards elitist authoritarian dictatorship (assuming that they’re not already there).
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.