I’m investigating ways of opposing tyranny. The theory behind the Second Amendment is that so long as people retain their right to arms, they can rise up and overthrow, or at least resist the tyrant, by armed insurrection. I’m questioning this contention by contrasting it with philosophies of civil disobedience and nonviolence. In this issue I wrap up my review of Civil Disobedience, in which Thoreau argues we should refuse to cooperate with, and disobey laws when they make us the agent of injustice against others. Thoreau acted on this basis and was put in jail for failing to pay the poll tax for six years.

Why the poll tax? He doesn’t answer immediately. He begins by saying he always paid the highway tax “because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.” This implies Thoreau thought those tax revenues provided worthwhile benefits to his neighbors or, at least, he did not want to offend his neighbors over a tax whose purpose did not offend his conscience.

However, he goes on to say he does “not care to trace the course of my dollar,” and it is for no particular item in the tax bill that he refuses to pay it: “I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually.” Apparently, then, Thoreau didn’t pay the poll tax on the general principle that he refused allegiance to the State, and not out of any particular concern for Massachusetts’ support for the Fugitive Slave Act and Mexican War, which Thoreau specifically discusses earlier in his essay as reasons to oppose the State.

While it might be tempting to completely dismiss Thoreau as an “extremist” of sorts, it’s important to realize anyone who practices civil disobedience functionally has this attitude. That is, conscientious civil disobedience necessarily implies that he who is disobedient holds allegiance to some thing that is higher (in his estimation) than the State, that he condemns the State from that vantage point, and acts accordingly without waiting for the State’s permission.

In Thoreau’s case, this was his own individual moral conscience. For others, it might be obedience to God, or allegiance to the Bill of Rights, or to some community interest. For a sociopath, it may be his own ego. Regardless of what thing you hold higher than the State, however, if you do this even in one thing that gets you noticed by the authorities, you have announced your allegiance is not to the State, and you will be on a collision course with the State.

In this regard it’s no different from one who believes his Second Amendment rights secure a right of armed insurrection. Such a man also holds some thing or principle higher than allegiance to the State. It is not this attribute, therefore, that distinguishes those who choose violence from those who choose nonviolence.

Imprisonment

Thoreau spent only one night in jail. A friend paid the tax for him, and he was released the next day. I will pass over Thoreau’s lyrical account of his night in prison. It does not provide any useful instruction to the current inhabitants of the Land of the Free who, under the Military Commissions Act, may be held on no charges while waiting for habeas corpus petitions to be heard and be subjected in the mean time to “enhanced interrogation techniques” and prolonged sensory deprivation that can cripple or destroy a man’s mind.

However, Thoreau makes one remark about the effect of his imprisonment that I want to highlight here: a change in his attitude toward his fellow man.

“When I came out of prison ... a change had come to my eyes cove over the scene — the town and State and country, greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends, that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that in their sacrifices to humanity they ran no risks, not even to their property; that after all they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls.”

In the early part of his essay, Thoreau spoke of how men acted for all intents and purposes as mere machines for the State, and could be counted on to do what was expected of them, without question or resistance. The result of his prison experience was to further alienate Thoreau from his fellow man, to make it painfully clear to him how little they could be counted on to act on the basis of real neighborliness toward one another, and how very little they would risk to do what was right. This heightened perception of the limitations of his fellow man seems to have to have hardened him toward them, or possibly to have embittered him.

When he was released, Thoreau says he picked up where he left off, and went to the shoemaker’s to pick up his mended shoe. Afterward, he joined a party about to go gathering huckleberries. In half an hour they were two miles from the town, and then, he says, “the State was nowhere to be seen.”

Disobedience

Thoreau’s civil disobedience embodies a certain heroic or romantic view of the righteous American individual, battling titans alone. Certainly it is possible, in the right circumstances, for the individual example to inspire others. In 1976, the communist Czechoslovakian government tried and imprisoned four musicians, members of the underground psychedelic rock band, Plastic People of the Universe. Vaclav Havel, who managed to obtain permission to witness the trial, wrote about the effect this trial had on him and others who witnessed it.

The musicians simply wanted to make their own kind of music, and this is precisely what the government could not permit. In bringing the full force of its power and authority to crush these men, the event proved, however, not to shore up the government’s legitimacy, but instead provided a “unique illumination” of the nature of that government that undermined its legitimacy. While the musicians were found guilty, Havel wrote that the event nonetheless had “something elevating” about it:

“[C]hiefly, I suppose, it was the exciting realization that there are still people among us who assume the existential responsibility for their own truth and are willing to pay a high price for it ... Somewhere deep down, however, I discerned yet another element in this experience, perhaps the most important of all. It was something that aroused me, a challenge that was all the more urgent for being unintentional. It was the challenge of example. Suddenly, much of the wariness and caution that marks my behavior seemed petty to me. I felt an increased revulsion toward all forms of guile, all attempts at painlessly worming one’s way out of vital dilemmas. Suddenly, I discovered in myself more determination in one direction, and more independence in another. Suddenly I felt disgusted with a whole world in which — as I realized then — I still have one foot: the world of emergency exits.”

The example of the musicians who went to jail because they refused to stop making the kind of music they wanted helped Havel see the extent to which he was compromising with himself, and emboldened him to speak and live the truth. Havel himself would later be jailed as a political prisoner, but he went on to become a leader in the (nonviolent) Velvet Revolution, which ended Communist rule in 1989, and the first president of the newly established Czech Republic.

While Thoreau’s essay has inspired others across generations, in his own personal case, civil disobedience was in the end no more than a statement of defiance, ultimately leaving the State untouched and unreformed, creating no freedom for others, and ending in alienation and retreat. There is much in his example to contemplate how the myth of the lone, heroic individual actually works to keep us isolated, ineffectual and down.

In my next article, I will begin discussing Dr. Martin Luther King and Gandhi, who used non-cooperation and civil disobedience to create community, to unite separate, alienated and disenfranchised individuals, and in the process transformed both their societies and governments.