A Letter to A Friend

On The Prospects For American Civil Disobedience

Duck, Ol' Mate,

The other day on the phone, we spoke about massed passive civil disobedience.

There is one show-stopping problem with it that I did not discuss.

To review:

In my politics, I cleave to three ethical giants in this matter:

*** Henry David Thoreau -- his essay "On The Right And Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1849) is the earliest prominent statement of the philosophy in American history, apart from the implications of the Declaration of Independence, itself. It's that Thoreau makes explicit what the Declaration only implied. (Aside: I regard the Declaration as the highest refinement of politics in human history. I regard the Constitution as a counter-revolutionary act.)

*** Mahatma Gandhi -- his passive resistance campaign against the British in India was the most prominent practical application of the idea, to-date. A crucial difference between him and Thoreau is that the latter wasn't interested in leading a national campaign of liberation. Gandhi was, and he did. It worked.

*** Martin Luther King -- He was driven by a different imperative. He wasn't interested in destroying a government. He wanted black integration in American culture. He wanted to be an American. It's just that simple. Nonetheless, he applied the basic ideas of Gandhi and Thoreau to his particular problem. His campaign in Albany, Georgia led children into jail cells. This completely horrified the black clergy (along with nearly everyone else, and that was the point). They began to condemn him, and this resulted in his statement of cool defiance in the "Letter From Birmingham Jail," which is essential reading.

What's important to understand is this:

None of this would have worked against Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.

Can you think why?

It's because the very idea of passive disobedience of unjust law, and submitting one's own life to it, requires a moral conscience in the enemy, to which to make the appeal. One cannot stand in front of a criminal without moral conscience and appeal for a rational mercy. He simply will not care. In Nazi Germany, the USSR, or Communist China (to this very day), all three of these men and their followers would have been summarily crushed.

And this brings us to America in the 21st century.

The central question in all of this, in our current context is:

Is there enough of a moral conscience remaining in American culture to which to appeal by "flooding the courts and embracing the prisons," as I said?

I asked this question in Usenet (alt.politics.militia), about 1996. That year, I believed that there was. The essay (which I still have in archive) sank out of sight like a rock, with almost no response. People in that group were really angry about the first Clinton administration, and they weren't in any mood to consider the question, which is exactly why I brought it up.

I knew better than to take no-response in a group like that as dispositive, because of the specially pressurized context. I still think the question is valid, but I am less certain of the answer than ever before.

The reason why is this:

It's the socialists who are driving ethics and politics in America, now. Anything resembling anti-socialist politics (of any variant) has been fighting a rear-guard action since the end of the Reagan administration. (Their intellectual and moral cowardice, however, goes back to their betrayal of Barry Goldwater in 1964, and this is actually a very good analogy to Trump, today. John McCain is a great example.) Culturally, the socialists have possessed the political and ethical initiative beginning with Clinton in 1993.

This is a great deal of why Trump was so shocking and -- yes -- terrifying, to them, and it accounts for their entire practical response. The Russia Hoax illustrates this: there was no lie that they would not tell about him, and maintain it, no matter how manifestly wrong it was.

It was a demonstration of the basic socialist ethic:

"The ends justify the means."

There is no price that they would not pay -- in your money or blood -- in order to establish their utopia. The notorious communist historian Eric Hobsbawm said that twenty million lives would be worth it. He said this in 1994. He meant what he said, and all socialists hold the same basic conviction.

Of course, most Americans never think it through to that sort of conclusion. All they're interested in is their Free Stuff. (Elementary training in life teaches us that there is no such thing as "Free Stuff," but most Americans have now forgotten that this rule applies to whole cultures as much as to individuals.)

So;

Of course, they lie. They lie to people of innocent intent who don't know any better.

Of course; they steal. They do it myriad ways; like legislatively maneuvering a man like Trump into shipping countless billions of dollars overseas in omnibus spending bills (which, by the way, are specially crafted to prohibit analysis: nobody reads them before they vote). Yes; they do it with the complicity of Republican cowards like Dennis Hastert and Mitch McConnell, but those types are just apologist cowards. They would not even exist without the real revolutionaries in Congress driving the fight. (My friend Martin McPhillips calls them "janitorial socialists": they follow along after the parade and sweep-up the elephant droppings.)

And, yes, of course; they would kill whole masses if they had the power and thought it were necessary to their program. If you listen carefully, you can hear them inclining toward that very thing, right now.

What's obvious is the basic fight between collectivists and individualists.

What's at question here is the nature of the fight.

Thoreau, Gandhi, and King were spiritual soldiers. The difference is that they didn't fight with guns. They fought with ideas, in action.

The socialists have no serious regard for dissent of any sort, and they reject ideas, especially. They do not value human morality: theirs is the morality (if we call it that) of predatory animals.

Most Americans are not philosophers: they do not grasp the matter in conceptual detail. About half the country, however, does sense all of this viscerally. They have a gut-level apprehension of what's happening, and -- being Americans -- they are not inclined to simply take it without some kind of a fight. (This is unlike Europeans or Asians who are culturally bred to chains.)

This is the entire reason for the ghastly display that we saw at the Capitol last Wednesday and, as I said to you, anyone who blames Trump for that is simply not understanding that he is a symptom. What I'm talking about is why he was elected in the first place, in the wake of Obama (who had been the greatest advance of socialism in American history, to-date).

These people are desperate, now.

If I had my way, I would sternly admonish them against shooting, but I will certainly understand it if they do. This is important and worth the emphasis: endorsing armed combat and understanding it are two categorically different things.

And, in summation: if my admonishment were met with a factual argument that, "They're going to destroy us anyway, so what difference does it make?" -- I would not know how to dispute it honestly.