Many folks misunderstand some basic civics concepts. I’ve talked a lot about how the Secret Ballot (it is about forcing secrecy, not allowing it) and Social Contract (it is about government defending civil rights, not us giving up civil rights) are widely misunderstood.
Another broadly misunderstood concept is Consent of the Governed. It does not mean voting. The concept actually predates modern democracies by centuries, and originally was applied to kings, as an argument against the Divine Right of Kings, which said that authority to rule comes from God.
Even kings, Milton wrote, have their power derived from the people. It is not just that kings cannot rule without the support of the people, but that their authority is derived from the right of the people to grant that authority.
Locke developed this further, saying that this power is derived from individual rights. In America, we put this into our founding document, saying that the entire purpose — not just one of many purposes — of government is to secure individual rights.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …
You do not give your just consent to government by merely voting. You do it every day when you choose whether or not to support, or sometimes even follow, what the government says. Civil disobedience is an invaluable component of any society, because — way moreso than voting — it is what holds government accountable, on a daily basis.
Following the law is important, but a government has to continually earn the consent of the people in order to get that in return.
In America, the people are not just equal to each other, but are sovereigns in themselves, superior to government. Government serves us; it does not rule us. It never has. It has the power of the sword, but only in service to the people, against those who would violate our rights.
As the Declaration of Independence says, we should not dismiss the government for “light and transient causes,” and this is for purely practical reasons: getting a whole nation to support a government takes a lot of time and effort.
But we should not ignore abuses and follow government just because it is the government. On the contrary, it is our legal right, and moral obligation to ourselves and our posterity, to do something about it, up to and including altering or abolishing the abusive government.
Everyday consent — the type where we respect government and follow the laws — is utterly crucial to a functioning government, which is why the media and politicians work so hard to lie to us every day: the more they violate the social contract, the more they lie to us. That is the only way they can hold on to power. A govt and media only significantly increases lies when it has to, when it is violating the rights of the people, to (as Chomsky said) manufacture consent.
The answer is (probably) not to simply overthrow government or violate as many laws as possible. But we must learn, think, and push back. We must withhold our consent when it is not warranted.