Couldn't agree more. NB: Here in Australia we need to attend a polling place and get marked off (or pay a $20 fine), but we can use the pieces of paper however we like. I usually scrawl, "Not my circus, not my monkeys".
I tried to leave with them once, but they wouldn't let me.
Romans 13 feels like it's encoded. He was likely in a Roman prison, sending a letter into the heart of Rome; he can't very well overtly call human government illegitimate. The letter would never arrive, and could cause all sorts of problems for both sender and recipient. Look at the reasoning he gives.
For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong
The common factor, the very reason they're all in the same group; is the belief that the state just brutally executed the only sinless person to ever exist.
If you want to slip a message past a censor you need to encode it cleverly, so that a belief or piece of knowledge that you and the intended recipient share (but any intermediary lacks) can be used to decipher it.
Any Christian statist who claims we're inconsistent with Romans 13 needs to clarify whether
A: Jesus deserved it.
B: He wasn't executed by the authorities.
C: Some change in the intervening decades fundamentally altered the nature of human government, rendering it harmless to the innocent.
Well said.