What right do people have if government becomes destructive?

If government becomes destructive of the rights it was created to protect, the Declaration of Independence holds that the people have the right to alter or abolish it and institute new government. The full passage in the second paragraph states that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

The right rests on the Declaration's prior premise that government is instituted by consent specifically to secure unalienable rights. If government fails that purpose, the consent that legitimized it can be withdrawn, and a new government may be established in its place.

The Declaration is careful to add that prudence will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. Only when a long train of abuses and usurpations evinces a design to reduce people under absolute despotism is revolution justified. The Declaration then lists 27 specific grievances against King George III to demonstrate that the colonies' situation met that high standard.

The American Revolution acted on this principle, and the Founders viewed their successful establishment of independent state governments and then the federal Constitution as the legitimate exercise of the right to alter or abolish. The principle does not authorize lawless violence. In the constitutional system the Founders eventually built, the ordinary mechanisms for altering government, including elections, constitutional amendments under Article V, and peaceful protest, are the legitimate routes for change.

Article I, Section 9 forbids the suspension of habeas corpus except in rebellion, and Article III, Section 3 defines treason narrowly. Modern courts have not recognized any right of armed resistance against the duly elected federal government. The Declaration's revolutionary right remains a moral and philosophical commitment, asserting that no government holds power that cannot be revoked, but the constitutional system channels that conviction into peaceful institutional change.