Well folks, here we are. Fighting with our own government about all the Covid 19 restrictions.
We don’t know who to believe, and state governors are enforcing restrictions that fly in the face of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I think people are now fed up with government in general. I honestly believe that the majority of our citizens now see both Republican and Democrat politicians as incompetent and feel that the Federal government has completely lost its way.
In looking at all this, I can’t help but think of a historical figure who spoke up in defiance of the all powerful government of the United States.
So today, I would like to share his story.
Henry David Thoreau felt the same way many of us do today, all the way back in 1846.
Here is the story.
Henry David Thoreau, the son of a Concord pencil-maker, graduated from Harvard in 1837.
He worked a short while as a schoolmaster, but then began writing poetry.
He soon joined a religious, philosophical, and literary movement called Transcendentalism.
The leader of the movement was Ralph Waldo Emerson, a writer and lecturer. Basically a bunch of hippies saying that everyone should do their own thing.
At first, Thoreau agreed with Emerson’s teaching that social reform begins with the individual.
In 1845, he built a hut at Walden Pond on property owned by Emerson.
For the next few years, Thoreau lived simply off the land, meditated, and wrote about nature. Again, basically a hippy 100 years ahead of his time!
Thoreau, in addition to communing with nature, also adopted another policy of the Transcendentalists.
“Every person should follow the dictates of his own individual conscience, even if doing so, he broke the laws of the land”.
Thoreau deliberately broke the law in 1846 by refusing to pay a poll tax.
His reason for not paying was that the tax would go to pay for the Mexican/American War, which he opposed.
I late July of 1846, Thoreau went to town to pick up some supplies.
On the way he met his friend, Sam Staples, who was tax collector, sheriff, and jailer. Are you out there listening Chris Twitchel?
Sam politely reminded Henry that he had not paid his poll tax. Henry said he would not pay it. So Sam said he’d pay it if Henry was hurting for money. Something Twitch would do.
Henry said it was the principal of the thing and he would not pay. Something I would do!
Sam told him, “If you don’t pay, I will have to lock you up.”
Henry replied, “Now is as good a time as any!” So Sam took his friend to jail.
Now Henry found jail fascinating. After all, he was a writer. There he came in contact with thieves, pirates, thugs and murderers. This gave him tons of new ideas for characters in his writings.
Well word go out that Henry had been arrested and his friends posted his bail.
When Sheriff Sam found the bail had been posted he went to the jail and told Henry he was free to go.
To Sam’s amazement Henry said he wouldn’t go! Henry said that since he hadn’t paid the bail, Sam couldn’t make him leave.
So Sam and the jailer physically drug Henry out of the jail and set him free.
Henry was furious and decided the best way to continue his protest was to write about it.
He then sat down and wrote a speech titled “Civil Disobedience” that he delivered at the Concord Lyceum in January 1848. ( note: Henry died of TB in 1862 at the age of 45)
Thoreau’s minor act of defiance caused him to conclude that it was not enough to be simply against slavery and the war. A person of conscience had to act. In “Civil Disobedience,” he proclaimed an activist manifesto:
“In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation, which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty, are slaves, and a whole country [Mexico] is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize”.
Thoreau argued that the government must end its unjust actions to earn the right to collect taxes from its citizens.
As long as the government commits unjust actions, he continued, conscientious individuals must choose whether to pay their taxes or to refuse to pay them and defy the government.
Thoreau declared that if the government required people to participate in injustice by obeying “unjust laws,” then people should “break the laws” even if they ended up in prison. Sound familiar to what we are seeing now folks?
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly,” he asserted, “the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
By not paying his taxes, Thoreau explained, he was refusing his allegiance to the government. “In fact,” he wrote, “I quietly declare war with the State….”
Unlike some later advocates of civil disobedience like Martin Luther King, Thoreau did not rule out using violence against an unjust government.
In 1859, Thoreau defended John Brown’s bloody attack on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, during his failed attempt to spark a slave revolt.
Thoreau had no objection to government taxes for highways and schools.
But government, he charged, was too often based on expediency, which can permit injustice in the name of public convenience.
The individual, he insisted, was never obliged to surrender conscience to the majority or to the State.
If a law “is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another,” he declares, “then, I say, break the law.” The essay makes it clear that this stance is not a matter of whim but a demanding moral principle.
Thoreau’s essay has had a huge influence on reformers worldwide, from Tolstoy in Russia and Gandhi in South Africa and India; to Martin Luther King, Jr’s civil rights movement and the opposition to the Vietnam War in the United States; to recent demonstrations for civil rights in the former Soviet Union and China.
Now this was not a call for violence. Gandhi himself advocated the use of civility at all times “the civil register,” which extols respect for the opposition and behavior out of understanding rather than anger.
He and his followers practiced “Non-violent, non-participation”. In other words, he invented the sit in! And like Thoreau, Gandhi was constantly seeking the higher truth with regard to man’s relationship in the universe.
Thoreau’s essay had more wide reaching political and social impact than most people know.
In the 1940’s it was read by the Danish resistance, in the 1950’s it was followed by people who opposed McCarthyism, in the 1960’s it was influential in the struggle against South African apartheid, and in the 1970’s it was discovered by a new generation of anti-war activists.
Thoreau was a firm believer in autonomy, professing individual defiance of unjust laws, and a stubborn resistance to government intrusion into society.
It is important to understand that Thoreau was not anti-government; he was pro “improved” government.
He stated, “But to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”
Thoreau, at the time, saw a government that in his perception was often immoral, overbearing, and self-righteous.
Again, sound familiar?
Republicans hated Obamacare. Democrats hate building the wall. Impeachment, Obamagate, Socialism vs. Capitalism, now the Covid 19 fiasco.
Our nation has never been more divided. In Washington DC., yes. But how about out here among the people. The common folk, the individuals, who make up this great land of ours?
I meet regularly for coffee with friends who are to totally opposite to my views on politics. Nowadays we do it on Zoom.
We have lively discussions, argue over current events, and claim our opponents at the table are wrong.
Yet somehow, we agree to disagree, air our differences, smile and shake hands and set a time to meet the following week.
Why can’t that happen in our nation’s capital? My friends and I are as bull headed as they come, but we are willing to listen to both sides and still get along.
Would Thoreau roll over in his grave at the state of politics in America today? Or rather, would he urge us to stand up as individuals, take action against the established order with autonomy (neither Republican nor Democrat), reason, and intellect.
Let me share the first line of Thoreau’s lecture, “Civil Disobedience” (1849)
I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe- “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
Now interestingly enough, Thoreau went on to discuss the issue of the presidency.
I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought.
O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through!
I think you can apply Thoreau’s words not just to the presidency, but to all of the federal politicians currently occupying the swamp that we call Washington, DC.
If you have not read “Civil Disobedience” I encourage you to do so. Put it in your left hand and put the declaration of Independence in your right.
Read them both. Then take a few minutes to think about what these two documents are saying. Think about the men who wrote them and the times they were living in.
We the people are losing all respect for the politicians on both sides of the aisle and the majority believe they are systematically destroying the principals upon which this great nation was founded.
Callers?