When the laws of government fail to secure the rights, freedoms, and liberties of the people, it becomes not just an imperative responsibility but an absolute civic duty to abolish the oppressive state and to reinstate the Law of Nature. We do not need to apologize for standing up against an oppressive government. This revolutionary act of civil disobedience has historically been a point of national pride. It is the very essence upon which this country was founded.
The Declaration of Independence of 1776 set a precedent: people are endowed with certain inalienable human rights. It established — for all time — that it is the birthright of a free people to throw off tyrannical forms of government. It is our heritage and custom to rise up against authoritarianism and abolish foreign power. These words of freedom and liberation are not outdated relics of the past. They are meant to be the heart and soul of the nation by which people live and die.
What it is — and is not
Civil disobedience is not a riot. It is not a secret. It is not a license to injure. It is the public, conscientious refusal to participate in a law or practice that itself violates a higher law — the Golden Rule, the Law of Balance, the natural human rights that precede every statute. That is the tradition this plan stands in.
The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
If it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.
The 20/20 Plan’s practice of that tradition is Opt-Out / Opt-In. Withdraw support from what causes harm. Redirect the same money, time, attention, and labor into what restores balance. The disobedience is the refusal to remain complicit. The construction is the proof that a better product already exists.
Notice of withdrawal
We will no longer support that which we do not consent to. We will no longer be complicit in the violation of human rights. We will not aid and abet criminals who operate under the cover of law. We will restore justice — in this country and in the world.
This is not a declaration of war. It is a declaration of consciousness and civic sovereignty. It is the most powerful form of civic authority available to any free people: the withdrawal of consent, and the commitment to live by a law that does not require anyone to be victimized in order for someone else to prosper.
How to practice it
Decline to purchase what you know is designed to sicken or enslave. Move money out of institutions that finance the harm. Leave platforms that harvest the mind. Refuse procedures that violate bodily autonomy and informed consent. Do these things openly enough that a neighbor can copy them, and peacefully enough that no innocent person is made to pay for your conscience.
Then fill the space you have opened. Grow food. Learn a trade. Know your rights by their actual text. Build a circle that can share tools, surplus, and defense of one another. Civil disobedience without a constructive counterpart is only a vacuum. The 20/20 Plan insists on both: subtract the negative, add the positive.