Derailing the Train

Benjamin Franklin Gates: Of all the words written here about freedom, there's a line here that's at the heart of all the others. '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 provide new Guards for their future security'...People don't talk that way anymore.
Riley Poole: Beautiful...I have no idea what you just said.
Benjamin Franklin Gates: It means if there's something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.
--National Treasure

Although we have all been endowed with the inalienable right to liberty, the law of diversity suggests that each of us does not value liberty equally. Perhaps liberty preference is normally distributed among individuals.

On one end of the bell-shaped curve are people who value freedom so highly that they're willing to rebel when their liberty is infringed only slightly. Because they reside out in the 'tail' of the distribution, these folks are few in number.

On the other end are those content to trade their liberty away for a something else, such as a government-provided security--however temporary that provision may be. There are relatively few of these tail dwellers as well.

If preference for liberty is approximated by the normal distribution, then most people reside in the middle. They are willing to tolerate some compromise to their freedom--perhaps because they figure that the cost of pushback exceeds the perceived gain.

It takes, in the classic words of Locke and Jefferson, 'a long train of abuses' of liberty by government to motivate pushback from the middle group. As that train lengthens, however, preference for liberty is activated in more people in the meat of the bell-shaped curve. At some point, critical mass is reached where rebels collectively engage in throwing off tyrannical government.

How large must that critical mass be? Researchers estimate that the fraction of colonists willing to engage in active rebellion against the British was no more than 1/3 of the colonial population prior to the beginning of the American Revolution. Studies of other libertarian movements conclude similarly. The fraction of the bell-shaped curve whose liberty preference must be engaged to spark rebellion tends to be far less than half.

As governors continue, and in some cases escalate, conditions of draconian lockdown in some states, the train of abuses is getting longer. The lengthening train is engaging the liberty preference in more individuals. These individuals are pushing back in larger numbers. If this process continues, this pushback will get organized with the collective objective of derailing the train.