Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience = DeceptiCON Kryptonite

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of ’75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them: all machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer.”  Check out today’s transcript  AND CLIP OF THE DAY for the rest….

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Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Now I know why decepticons can’t stand Henry David Thoreau and just throw him out as an American socialist or communist or liberal or tree-hugger or whatever it is you say about him.  I remember Don Henley mentioned Thoreau one time at a concert and that set off a bunch of bloggers at HotAir or MichelleMalkin.com or whatever in denouncing Don Henley, the drummer for the Eagles, as some kind of a whacko, war-protesting weirdo, [mocking] “And we now know that he is because he has a fondness for Thoreau.”  Now you can understand this after you’ve read Thoreau.  This is from the – I would say it’s famous but it’s not famous.  It’s infamous, meaning it’s supposed to be bad.  This is from the infamous Civil Disobedience.

Remember, Charles Murray, the noted psychologist and author of Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 – we’ve had him on the show several occasions talking about that book.  He’s also the co-author of the book that got him banned and kicked out of popular academia, which was call The Bell Curve.  Murray is one of the wisest guys out there writing about the issues that currently plague those that live under the American government, or those that suffer under the auspices of the American government.  Murray has proposed many solutions.  It shouldn’t surprise people that when I asked Charles Murray last year, I asked him: Dr. Murray, is it fair to say that [private |FP-Monthly|FP-Yearly|FP-Yearly-WLK|FP-Yearly-So76|Founding Brother|Founding Father|FP-Lifetime] most of our problems that we blame government for really can’t be solved by government?  Conservatives are always running around out there saying: We know government’s not the answer.  They never say what is the answer.  Instead they give this ubiquitous abstract that is “the free market.”  The market cannot solve problems of morality, it can’t, and it’s not going to.

This is just a snippet of the essay Civil Disobedience from Henry David Thoreau.  You’ll understand in a matter of moments why Thoreau is despised by your average decepticon.  That’s a fake, phony fraud that masquerades around and calls himself a conservative.

[reading]

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.

[end reading]

Mike:  I’m going to stop right there.  I remember when David Simpson was on the show last, my buddy David Simpson, for Wisdom Wednesday, he explained something that seemingly just goes over the head.  It is not thought about by many people today.  What is government?  What’s the purpose of government?  The purpose of government is the promotion and security of the common good.  In other words, it exists and is supposed to execute its limited amount of tasks on behalf of everyone, not on behalf of special classes of people, or people that have bought and paid for a privilege, but everyone.  That’s what government is.  That’s why you use government and not private-sector initiatives to do certain things.  Back to Thoreau:

[reading]

Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? – in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said, that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. [Mike: Of course, we don’t have very many corporations with a conscience today do we?] Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, aye, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. [Mike: They used to be peaceably inclined; today men are inclined to war.] Now, what are they? Men at all? or small moveable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts, a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may be

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.

The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatuts, &c. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones, and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw, or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and officerholders, serve the State chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and as necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be “clay,” and “stop a hole to keep the wind away,” but leave that office to his dust at least:

I am too high-born to be propertied,
To be a secondary at control,
Or useful serving-man and instrument
To any sovereign state throughout the world.

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of ’75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them: all machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. 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 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. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact, that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

[end reading]

Mike:  You have to read the rest of this.  This is basically an homage, obviously from Civil War times, or the War of Northern Aggression times, by Thoreau lamenting the fact that – it actually presaged the Civil War, from 1849 – that there is a sense that it was okay to have a standing army to go beat back the Mexicans, but at the same time, we had to do that so we could make a principle stand for freedom and liberty.  At the same time, a sixth of the population remained bonded to slavery.  It’s a fair argument to make. [/private]

To the rest of his argument, if you read the rest of Civil Disobedience, what you’ll find is an overwhelming sense that it is the standing army itself that makes, out of the rest of the population, slaves.  When I said this shouldn’t come as a surprise that decepticons run in fear of Henry David Thoreau, that’s why.  Also the beautiful prose in there about: Why would you serve a government that asks you to do things that are against your conscience?[/private]

I’ve asked this question over and over and over again.  Why do men accept contracts and contract work from a government that they have to know has obtained its revenue through coercion, through the end of the IRS’s gun or other tax collectors, and has stolen the property and stolen the wages and stolen the fruits of the hard work and labor of their fellow men?

I’m just going to repeat this because maybe it’s been a month or so since I’ve said it.  If you knew that your wages were coming from loot that was stolen right out of your neighbor’s house because somebody figured out where his safe was and he had hid his money in his mattress, would you accept the job?  This is a very simple question.  Most of you are going to admirably say of course not.  When you accept the job, especially for make-work that’s not real work at all but only is the work of misery and tyranny, why do you accept it when the government does it?  They still stole the money out of the guy’s mattress.  They just used their “legal” means to get it.

End Mike Church Show Transcript