> No, this is mob rule.

I understand why you would say that, but I don't think you've thought it through, understood the point I'm making, and tried to disarm the strongest version of it possible.

Go and read the preamble to the declaration of independence, seriously. America was founded by citizens of Great Britain stating that they are the final arbiters of justice, not British courts. The British courts would have said the founding fathers are violating the law. They would have found them participating in mob rule, and they did try to put down that mob with an army.

You should answer a few questions:

(1) What is a right, and what is the relationship between law and rights. Does law grant rights, or does law protect rights?

(2) How does a government go from absolute monarchy (king is able to make all the laws and enforce them arbitrarily) to a law based society?

(3) How do you bootstrap a law based society? Can you make a law based society without breaking the law?

(4) Was the civil rights movement under MLK a form of mob rule?

You’re going off piste. I’m objecting to the claim that citizens are the final arbiters of the law. That is not a view that was held by the founders because they were studied in the history of direct democracies, the early forms of which didn’t distinguish between the citizens qua legislators and citizens qua courts.

> But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

That is literally in our founding document and literally citizens being the final arbiters of law.

> That is literally in our founding document and literally citizens being the final arbiters of law

That’s an uncommon reading of that line. Citizens can throw off the government. That doesn’t make them the final arbiters of the law. (Not even legal system. One point of that sentence is you don’t get to choose which parts you throw off.)

This is a whole lot of pedantry to avoid questioning your own beliefs, which isn't surprising, because once you accept the cold hard reality that justice comes from the bottom up, not the top down, it means you have a personal responsibility to do so something if you want justice, and that's a hard reality to accept, so it's easier to live in comfortable denial.

> once you accept the cold hard reality that justice comes from the bottom up, not the top down

Justice, morals and—in my opinion—rights, yes. Even the right of the law to rule, yes. But the arbitration of the law? The particulars of its execution. No.

If the system of law is corrupted, you have to throw out the whole government. That’s why the attacks on our judiciary are so frightening. It’s really difficult to unfuck the rule of law.