When Government Demands Papers We Refuse

 By Matthew Hayward 

9/19/2025 

The Supreme Court just paused a lower court order that had limited federal immigration stops in Los Angeles. That stay lets federal agents resume roving patrols and interior operations that critics say rely on appearance, language, job, or neighborhood to pick people for questioning. 

This matters because it normalizes a posture of suspicion. Checkpoints miles inland and roving patrols turn movement inside the country into a condition to be earned rather than a freedom to be enjoyed. The government already claims expanded authority inside the 100-mile border zone. That claim, plus an open green light for stops based on appearance, is a recipe for arbitrary enforcement. 

Philosophy of resistance

John Locke told us that the consent of the governed is the foundation of legitimate power. When rulers invade life, liberty, or property, or when they become arbitrary disposers of people’s lives and fortunes, the social compact is dissolved and the people regain the right to resist. That is not romanticism. It is a political theory the Founders drank deeply from when they drafted the argument for independence. 

Jefferson wrote it plainly. The Declaration says whenever a government becomes destructive of the ends it was created to secure, the people have the right to alter or abolish it. Those words are not ceremonial. They are an existential claim about when ordinary obedience becomes moral complicity. 

What does that mean now

This is a test of civic character. The mere existence of a court stay does not make an action right. It makes it a legal fight worth having and a moral fight worth choosing sides on. The threshold Locke and the Declaration describe is high. Prudence requires enormous restraint. That restraint does not equal acquiescence.

Resisting tyranny is a moral doctrine and a strategic posture. It demands clarity about ends and discipline about means. If you fight for liberty, you must not let it devolve into random violence or revenge. True resistance has to stay principled, not lawless. The historical philosophers who justified rebellion did so based on proportion, clear evidence of systemic wrongdoing, and the exhaustion of lawful remedies where lawful remedies were available and meaningful.

So be clear about this

We may not be under gas chambers or marching columns today. We should not deride the rhetoric of those who raise the alarm while also refusing to be lulled into normalization. When the state begins to treat whole communities as suspects, when checks on power fail, when courts and legislatures consolidate immunity for arbitrary seizures, the moral calculus changes. That change can justify resistance in principle. It does not license chaos. It demands strategy. It demands witnesses. It demands accountability. It demands moral seriousness.

A constrained moral claim

If government agents become an occupying force that seizes people without cause, if courts systematically ratify wholesale dispossession of life and liberty, and if the normal channels of redress are closed, the tradition that Locke and the Declaration anchor allows the people to reclaim their security. That claim includes the moral right to defend innocent life against unlawful annihilation. It does not include exhortations to random violence. It does not provide tactical instruction. It is a final principle, not a playbook.

How to act so the principle matters

Make the moral argument public. Tie legal fights to broad civic pressure. Build durable institutions of accountability. Document every abuse. Fund serious test cases. Elect and remove officials who weaponize enforcement. Train journalists and lawyers to follow stops and checkpoints so abuses cannot be hidden. Make resistance costly to would-be tyrants in votes, funds, reputation, and leverage.

Locke and the Declaration give us a last resort doctrine because they did not trust power. They demanded citizens who are awake enough to refuse being reduced to subjects. That refusal must be principled, public, and proportionate. It must preserve the distinction between defending liberty and becoming what we oppose.

The duty of non-compliance

Resistance begins long before it reaches the point of revolution. It begins with a quiet but firm refusal to cooperate with illegitimate demands. I have lived this principle in small but meaningful ways: refusing body scanners at airports when global protests erupted, rejecting internal checkpoints on American highways, and never submitting to a DUI dragnet that treats every driver as a suspect. In each case, I have accepted that non-compliance might mean arrest, because liberty is not preserved by comfort or convenience.

Yet there is a line, uncertain until crossed, where passive refusal no longer suffices. Perhaps it looks like federal agents storming Ruby Ridge. Perhaps it looks like door-to-door confiscations based on the word of a vengeful neighbor. At some point, the calculus shifts. Submitting to detention in those moments is no longer a gesture of principle but a surrender of the very rights we are bound to defend.

Non-compliance is the soil in which liberty grows, but even Locke acknowledged that when rulers wage war on their people, the right of self-defense is no less valid than in any other assault. The challenge for free men and women is not whether that line exists; it does, but whether we will have the clarity and courage to recognize it when it arrives. . . Molon Labe

Edit: On Vaccine Passports

Some readers immediately brought up vaccine mandates and vaccine passports. Let me remind you, I organized the two largest rallies in Washington against those mandates. I have never wavered on that front.

But pointing to hypocrisy doesn’t excuse tyranny. The fact that the left once demanded “papers” to eat at a restaurant does not make it acceptable for the Supreme Court to greenlight “papers” on the side of the road. Freedom is not a partisan issue. It is either defended consistently or lost entirely.