[krapp]

The intended defense is that we all march on Washington armed to the teeth and shoot dead every last politician standing and start over.

Of course that made a lot more sense in the 18th century than it does in the 21st, we tend to view states that routinely engage in violent coups as failures, and the man who famously said of Shay's Rebellion that "the tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots" ran from Monticello like a coward when the British showed up and left its defense to his slaves.

But the last line of defense is supposed to be "we just kill them all." What the founders didn't anticipate was that the militias would side with the tyrants, or that society and its morals would advance to the point where political violence was no longer seen as a noble act except by extremists.