please spare us any egotistical, violent hero fantasies

Whoa, there! None of this should be construed as my own inclination, nor of any endorsement that someone else should do it. Where I said "From the perspective of someone whose morals are based on natural rights", I was trying to provide a reply using the logic that such a hypothetical person might reach.

That said, reaching a bit deeper into what I think that moral code would tell us...

The government has many unjust laws, some of which are punishable by completely destroying the life of the accused. Amongst these are "victimless" crimes, obviously things like use of drugs, but possibly more controversial things like the creation of computer-generated kiddie pr0n (and let me re-emphasize: I think that's gross, but strictly speaking it's victimless).

These so-called crimes would not be recognized as such in a natural-rights morality, because my body and soul are my own to do with as I choose, and I'm not hurting anyone else. Moreover, the prosecution of these crimes at a federal level is illegal, because the Constitution, the very thing that gives the government its legitimacy, does not permit it (contemporary jurisprudence would disagree, but again, I'm putting myself into the shoes of a hypothetical person; there are plenty who have the beliefs I'm describing).

Thus, the prosecution of any such crimes, and any penalties assessed for them, are themselves illegal. In other words, the government is committing crimes in pursuing them as they are doing.

Finally, here's the crux of the matter. The government is only able to do this because it maintains a monopoly on the use of force, and it is using this power in my name. That is, it is using my name to destroy people's lives. That makes me an (unwilling) criminal by proxy.

As a moral, upstanding citizen, I have a moral imperative to prevent these crimes (that is, the government illegally prosecuting non-crimes, as I see it). I should certainly be voting against the bureaucrats and politicians who are driving these actions. And I should be protesting, and making other people aware.

But the fact remains that lives are being destroyed right now, and it's being accomplished through the power that I have ceded to the government. My votes, my protests, and even the outrage of the other citizens that I've been able to convince, are not preventing these ongoing outrages.

When every day, scores more of these abominations are committed, do you expect me to sit idly by, continuing to function as the very foundation for the power that is executing them? If I'm a person who sees the world in moral black-and-white, how can I shrug off the fact that I am, in small part, responsible for destroying hundreds of thousands of lives? I must do something to clear my conscience.

OK, now let's look at things the other way around -- and let me apologize in advance for invoking Godwin, but it's not a stretched metaphor here, it's precisely the topic. What was the right course of action for the Germans under Hitler? Virtually all of them went right along with the program. But our typical American perspective today is that they should all have resisted. Is that sufficient, just letting the evil go rolling on as long as I say that it's evil, and refuse to actively participate? Or should they have taken more direct action to prevent what was happening?