They must be made to face the consequences of their actions

Jefferson wrote, in a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, the son-in-law of John Adams, that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." I believe that the occasional bashing of a flower vase over the head of an abusive IRS agent falls well within the scope of this observation and would have a salutary effect. "IRS Agent Uses Fake Name to Enter Taxpayer’s Home – Then Threatens Her to Cut a Check".

Now, the taxpayer in question did not, in fact, hit the IRS agent with a vase or anything else. She did, however, set her lawyer upon him, which, I suppose, was the next best thing. My point is that tyranny leaches into a society over time, assisted by the citizen's natural respect for law and order - even extending, eventually, to the grudging and reluctant acceptance of laws, or policies, that increasingly impinge on our freedoms and our security. Having become accustomed to obeying laws that are self-evidently good, the citizenry then becomes habituated to obeying mere authority, under the aegis of which bad law and policy can be established insidiously, without majority support. Once legitimate authority - the voice of the people - is destroyed, an illegitimate form of authority based on the will to power of a self-appointed elite - call it what you will: the Deep State, central government, the permanent bureaucracy, the one-party state - asserts itself and rules without recourse to tradition, reason, settled law or even sanity.

When our erstwhile servants have become our jailers, there is no longer a way back to the society as it was without making our new masters literally feel the pain of their arrogance and presumptuousness. What happens when we arrive at a point where what is necessary may not be technically lawful, under the narrow and twisted interpretations employed by the usurpers, but is actually just? When and how do we push back? The key question: what price are we willing to pay? Things to ponder in what may, indeed, be Late Republic America.