I now begin discussing men who created and led social movements based on nonviolent non-cooperation and civil disobedience, specifically Dr. Martin Luther King and Gandhi. In this article I will talk about Dr. King, who used non-cooperation and civil disobedience to help end segregation and institutionalized racism in America.

When I finished my discussion of Thoreau I noted his attitude embodied the American heroic or romantic view of the lone individual fighting titanic forces. While Thoreau’s view — that one should refuse to participate in carrying out any law that required one to be an instrument of injustice against another — was morally sound, it remained nothing more than a maxim for individual behavior. He did not pursue a course of action that led him to wider social action, and his experience in jail only deepened his alienation from his fellow man.

Dr. King forged the desire to fight and rectify injustice into powerful social and political movement that brought people together. He organized mass non-cooperation (such as the boycott of the public busses in Montgomery) and civil disobedience (nonviolent protests in violation of laws against public permit requirements) to powerfully challenge the status quo.

He was able to do this, however, because he had a foundation in existing social institutions; a great many of whose members wanted, with all their heart and soul, to end racial inequality and mistreatment, who could agree upon his principles and his methods, and were ready to act on it and suffer for it — namely, southern African-American Baptist churches.

Early on in this series I argued that one of the main problems with the glib assertion that individual firearm ownership can protect liberty, is that liberty is not the automatic outcome of killing tyrants and those who work for them. Murdering enemies is not a new form of constitution and plan of government. It does not automatically create, and is not the basis of a limited government that respects individual rights. That may be the first and most obvious shortcoming of the theory.

But when gun owners or gun rights organizations claim an armed people can resist tyranny, without delving any deeper, probably the second most important fact they bypass is that, for any resistance to succeed and to lead to a better alternative, it will have to have a solid base of social support among people who have basic agreement upon the principles of the new political order that is supposed to replace the existing order. What social connections do gun owners have — either among themselves but more especially with other groups of Americans opposed to tyranny — that might serve as a foundation for a new political order? Who is working on this right now?

Myth?

In America, firearms ownership is a part of the mythos of self-reliant individualism. The notion of armed self-defense is strongly rooted in our ideals of the solitary individual who takes care of himself and his own. In my opinion, however, this ideal is an insufficient and self-defeating model for the relation of a people to their government. The solitary man who will go down fighting, gun in his cold dead hands, as a martyr to the cause of liberty, while perhaps satisfying emotionally as a tale of our potential heroism — theoretically, if it ever comes to that, but not today — is a fantasy that sidetracks us from the real work needing to be done to keep ourselves free and, so long as it succeeds at diverting us from the truth, in fact simply helps keep us enslaved.

Actual and effective resistance to tyranny requires a strong social foundation, and a network of people who agree about fundamental principles, goals and the methods of achieving those goals. Anyone who believes an armed people can resist tyranny and preserve liberty needs to explain what social network they see themselves as a part of, what political plan they see themselves as having, that will support resistance to tyranny, and the institution of an improved form of government that will better respect individual liberties. How will this network exist, and how will we become a part of it if we are not already participating in it well before the time comes for last and desperate measures — if we are not already discussing the current “long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object” to reduce us “under absolute Despotism” (to use the words of the Declaration of Independence), and already taking coordinated nonviolent action against government excesses?

Or are proponents of the theory armed citizens will preserve liberty simply banking on the belief that somehow, it will just happen when it is time? Scientists and philosophers have a joke for this sort of magical thinking, when people connect one thing (say, armed individuals) with another (say, liberty) without ever describing how the one leads to the other. They say that the unstated and implicit missing explanation is “and then a miracle occurs.”

A person who sits at home and does little more than congratulate himself for having the equipment he needs for the Second American Revolution and who, unknowledgeable about history, political affairs and current events, is not involved with any wider group of people engaged in an ongoing struggle against the depredations of our government is no threat to the powers that be. He is alone. He has no comrades; he has no plan; he really doesn’t even know what he would fight for. He is deluding himself with a daydream fantasy that he is “free” to resist while the reality is that with each passing day he tolerates ever more control of his life and becomes more of a slave laborer for The Man.

As long as we remain isolated, we are neutered; we remain safe to the powers that be. The time to participate is now. And by participation, I mean ongoing activity that includes actual flesh and blood association with others, not passive support in the form of sending money to lobbying organizations like the NRA, simply sending letters to representatives or pulling the voting lever once every couple of years. By working with others to oppose the incursions on our rights now, we create bonds with people who understand what is at stake and who desire change. Later in this series when I discuss Vaclav Havel and the history of the (nonviolent) Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, we will see how this kind of association helped bring about a freer Czechoslovakia.

But that is down the road a bit. In my next article I will examine Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, and we will see what we he said about the purposes of non-cooperation and civil disobedience, and how he used them to achieve results.

Jeff Snyder’s book, Nation of Cowards, is available at www.accuratepress.net.

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