When Is It Legitimate to Replace Commander Pollo Loco?
Picture a nuclear submarine commander who's gone severely sideways. Let's call him Commander Pollo Loco.
Loco's case illustrates the difference between natural law and manmade law--a distinction we've been brain-baked to forget for nearly a century, with grave consequences.
Commander Loco is increasingly unstable. He plays Russian roulette with ICBMs, seeks conflict with friendly nations, feeds his sailors toxic sludge made of paint thinners, injects them with heavy metals as "immune boosters," surveils them 24/7 with tracking agents for their own "safety," and restricts movement, behavior, and expression in the name of national security--all inside a pressurized tin can he believes he has the right to steer straight into Hades.
This kind of Loco wouldn't last long in naval reality.
Naval code doesn't honor rank when rank goes loco. Obedience ends--at least in theory--when survival and basic human rights are trampled. Under naval law, Captain Loco would be replaced by saner minds through a relatively painless process, without mutiny or revolution.
Naval law, in this limited but critical sense, follows natural law.
Natural law says life comes first. Your body, your mind, your ability to move, eat, breathe clean air, stay alive, and pursue happiness and prosperity are not permissions granted by a captain, an authority, or a government. They are inherent rights you're born with.
Manmade law exists to protect those rights--not override them.
We forgot this principle last century, except for a brief moment after Nuremberg, when it became clear that "I was just following orders" is not a defense. Authority does not absolve participation in harm.
That forgetting is why we're in a historical mess today.
Western governments now behave far crazier than Captain Loco. Loco is standard operating procedure today. Governments regulate people into sickness, normalize mass surveillance, degrade food systems, escalate wars, and cement digital laws that severely restrict travel, work, spending, and expression--along with nearly every other natural right.
These laws may be legal. They are not legitimate.
Natural law cannot be granted, adjusted, or revoked. It is inherent.
Manmade law is only valid when it respects natural law.
Try explaining that to a judge today. He'll grin, then yawn, then drop you into a maximum-security hole. That doesn't mean you're wrong. It means the judge never studied natural law--much like doctors who never studied nutrition or vaccines yet somehow know what's best for you.
Native tribes understood the need for a kill switch. They'd throw Chief Loco off a cliff. Navies would lock him in a cabin.
Modern governments would anoint him president or prime minister.
Honestly, it's worse. Twenty-first-century governments seem to manufacture Locos--brewed in some gender-fluid cocktail in an underground lab somewhere in Eastern Europe, if I had to guess.
There is one exception.
New Hampshire's state constitution says that when government endangers liberty and all remedies fail, the people may reform or replace it through due process.
The framers of the constitution, written in 1784, leaned heavily on John Locke's idea that government exists only to secure pre-existing rights--life, liberty, and property--and loses legitimacy when it consistently violates them.
Most states nodded politely at this idea and moved on. New Hampshire operationalized it. Article 10 states that the people "may, and of right ought to" reform or replace a destructive government once other remedies fail. The wording matters. It frames replacement as maintenance, not rebellion.
Other constitutions were written with a quiet assumption that the danger would come from kings above, not decay or corruption from within. They built defenses against monarchs, not against bureaucracies, technocracies, permanent emergency states--or Captain Locos.
Picture a nuclear submarine commander who's gone severely sideways. Let's call him Commander Pollo Loco.
Loco's case illustrates the difference between natural law and manmade law--a distinction we've been brain-baked to forget for nearly a century, with grave consequences.
Commander Loco is increasingly unstable. He plays Russian roulette with ICBMs, seeks conflict with friendly nations, feeds his sailors toxic sludge made of paint thinners, injects them with heavy metals as "immune boosters," surveils them 24/7 with tracking agents for their own "safety," and restricts movement, behavior, and expression in the name of national security--all inside a pressurized tin can he believes he has the right to steer straight into Hades.
This kind of Loco wouldn't last long in naval reality.
Naval code doesn't honor rank when rank goes loco. Obedience ends--at least in theory--when survival and basic human rights are trampled. Under naval law, Captain Loco would be replaced by saner minds through a relatively painless process, without mutiny or revolution.
Naval law, in this limited but critical sense, follows natural law.
Natural law says life comes first. Your body, your mind, your ability to move, eat, breathe clean air, stay alive, and pursue happiness and prosperity are not permissions granted by a captain, an authority, or a government. They are inherent rights you're born with.
Manmade law exists to protect those rights--not override them.
We forgot this principle last century, except for a brief moment after Nuremberg, when it became clear that "I was just following orders" is not a defense. Authority does not absolve participation in harm.
That forgetting is why we're in a historical mess today.
Western governments now behave far crazier than Captain Loco. Loco is standard operating procedure today. Governments regulate people into sickness, normalize mass surveillance, degrade food systems, escalate wars, and cement digital laws that severely restrict travel, work, spending, and expression--along with nearly every other natural right.
These laws may be legal. They are not legitimate.
Natural law cannot be granted, adjusted, or revoked. It is inherent.
Manmade law is only valid when it respects natural law.
Try explaining that to a judge today. He'll grin, then yawn, then drop you into a maximum-security hole. That doesn't mean you're wrong. It means the judge never studied natural law--much like doctors who never studied nutrition or vaccines yet somehow know what's best for you.
Native tribes understood the need for a kill switch. They'd throw Chief Loco off a cliff. Navies would lock him in a cabin.
Modern governments would anoint him president or prime minister.
Honestly, it's worse. Twenty-first-century governments seem to manufacture Locos--brewed in some gender-fluid cocktail in an underground lab somewhere in Eastern Europe, if I had to guess.
There is one exception.
New Hampshire's state constitution says that when government endangers liberty and all remedies fail, the people may reform or replace it through due process.
The framers of the constitution, written in 1784, leaned heavily on John Locke's idea that government exists only to secure pre-existing rights--life, liberty, and property--and loses legitimacy when it consistently violates them.
Most states nodded politely at this idea and moved on. New Hampshire operationalized it. Article 10 states that the people "may, and of right ought to" reform or replace a destructive government once other remedies fail. The wording matters. It frames replacement as maintenance, not rebellion.
Other constitutions were written with a quiet assumption that the danger would come from kings above, not decay or corruption from within. They built defenses against monarchs, not against bureaucracies, technocracies, permanent emergency states--or Captain Locos.