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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Agents of the state are morally responsible for their actions I am sometimes upbraided for excoriating policemen or the military or [fill in the blank with the state agent of your choice] because I allegedly do not take into account that policemen or military are individuals with unique motives and values. The accusation runs...it may be true that the legal system currently expresses and enforces injustice, but many individual policemen are honorable and believe in the constitution. Thus, it is unfair to hold them responsible for a system that they are trying to change. I disagree. As long as an individual freely chooses to violate the rights of peaceful people -- and the War on Drugs (to state just one example) is clearly such a violation -- then it is not a defense to claim the individual is decent enough to know his actions are wrong any more than it is a defense to say "it is his job"....which is to say, he is not only violating rights but also getting paid for it. These are not defenses. These are further condemnations. If a policeman knows it is unjust to smash in a door in the middle-of-the-night because someone may have drugs in their sock drawer, then he should not do it. Like the employee whose video "Why Bank of America Fired Me" was featured here on Sunday, they should refuse to violate innocent human beings. If they chose to do so, then they must take personal responsibility. Yesterday's blog post Civil Disobedience and The Business of Living touched on Henry David Thoreau's view of personal responsibility but the focus was on the sense of his own duty to not participate in injustice; Thoreau also had a well-developed view of the responsibility of others who made the opposite choice, who decided to render support either directly or indirectly to injustice. Allow me to set context. The 1840s expressed a spirit of expansion called “Manifest Destiny” -- the idea that it was the destiny of Americans to expand across the continent, civilizing the wilderness and the natives as they went. Part of the expansion was an annexation of Texas, which sparked a war with Mexico who also claimed the area. The annexation was doubly offensive to Thoreau because it permitted slavery in the new territory. Thus, Thoreau's famous essay “Civil Disobedience” portrays the Mexican-American war as an evil comparable to slavery and his famous act of disobedience was to refuse to support that evil through paying a tax. The domestic consequences of the conflict also disturbed him deeply. Taxes soared; the country assumed a military air. And Thoreau was horrified to learn that some of his neighbors actively supported the war. But the ones who perplexed him the most were neighbors who did not support the war but, nevertheless, financed it through the taxes they paid. After all, he considered the war to be “the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool.” Without co-operation from a majority of people, those “few individuals” would not succeed in wielding that tool. What responsibility did his neighbors bear? Thoreau began with the most active supporters of all; namely, those individuals who constituted the standing army that was being used as a weapon by the elites. Thoreau wondered about the psychology of men who could fight a war and kill strangers out of a sense of obedience. He concluded that soldiers, by virtue of their absolute obedience to the state, become somewhat less than human because they have relinquished the defining aspect of humanity -- their free will, their moral sovereignty. He wrote, “Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable 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…” This is how “the mass of men” employed by the state render service to it, “not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.” In abandoning the free exercise of their moral sense, soldiers “put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones.” Equally I maintain that this is how policemen and other enforcement agents of the state render service to it -- in a capacity that is less than fully human. What is the alternative? Thoreau explained, “How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” But his “well-meaning” neighbors – even those who opposed slavery and war -- did associate with the American government to the extent of obeying laws and paying taxes. Thoreau ascribed their behavior to ignorance and concluded, “they would do better if they knew how.” The problem remained, however, why did people like his close friend Ralph Waldo Emerson -- who could not be called ignorant – render any obedience to laws with which they know are oppressive? One motivation: some people believe they need a government and, so, are willing to accept an imperfect one. Such people, Thoreau explained, accept government as a “necessary evil.” Other people support government out of self-interest; Thoreau specifically mentioned merchants and farmers in Massachusetts who profit from the war and from slavery but he could have included police, tax-collectors, soldiers and others who derive money from acting on the state's behalf. Still others obey because they fear the consequences of disobedience. This was the neighbor who argued, ‘if I deny the authority of the state and refuse to pay taxes, the state will confiscate my property and harass my family.’ Thoreau knew that this was a fair assessment of likely consequences. “When I converse with the freest of my neighbors,” he wrote, “I perceive that…they dread the consequences to their property and families of disobedience….This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.” By his own lights, Thoreau was fortunate in this respect. He had neither property to be seized nor children to go hungry. Accordingly, he did not criticize men who reluctantly obeyed an unjust law out of fear for their families. Instead, Thoreau’s criticism was aimed at the form of obedience that springs from a genuine respect for the authority of the state. This obedience says, "The law is the law, and should be respected regardless of content...even if I know the content is unjust." Through this approach, otherwise good men become agents of injustice. ‘The law is the law and should be respected’ – Thoreau dissected the notion. For one thing, not all laws are equal. Some laws exist for no other reason than to protect the government; for example, laws against tax evasion, treason, or contempt of court. Such laws often have more severe penalties than do those that protect individuals against violence. Moreover, the proscribed penalties for denying government’s authority are often so vague and sweeping as to invite arbitrary sentences from the court. Lawyers and the courts are part of the state’s defensive machinery. Thoreau concluded, “The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency….He well deserves to be called…the Defender of the Constitution. Still thinking of the sanction which the Constitution gives to slavery, he says, ‘Because it was part of the original compact--let it stand’…[H]e is unable to take a fact out of its merely political relations." Such courts offered no protection to Thoreau who peacefully refused to respect their authority. But Thoreau took his refusal one step farther than most. He not only rejected unjust laws and those who enforced them but also the men who created them. He withdrew his support from politicians who “rarely make any moral distinctions” and “are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God.” Thoreau’s use of the word “intending” is significant. Even well intentioned politicians stand so completely within the institution of government that they never distinctly and nakedly behold it. Whatever they intend, their actions serve the government’s ends. Thoreau's disdain for politicians may seem a logical extension of his disrespect for “the law” but many reformers disrespected the law without holding lawmakers personally responsible. The viewpoint of such people overlooked the role of “choice,” Thoreau argued that every politician who created a law chose to do so; every agent who enforced a law chose to do so. If they created or enforced a law with which they disagreed, then they have surrendered their conscience to the state and should be held personally responsible for that decision. Holding politicians personally responsible was not the last step in Thoreau’s withdrawal of support. He denied the authority of government itself. Again, rejecting politicians may seem logically to imply the rejection of government; but, again, many reformers rejected politicians without rejecting politics. Thoreau held such reformers personally responsible as well. “Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.” Thoreau specifically addressed fellow-abolitionists who called for the immediate cessation of slavery. Instead of petitioning the government to dissolve the Union with slaveholders, Thoreau believed those reformers should dissolve “the union between themselves and the State--and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury.” Petitions only strengthened the authority of the government by recognizing its authority and honoring the will of the majority. “[A]ny man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already,” he observed. The reformers who petition government for permission, “love better to talk” about justice than to act on it. Thus, Thoreau concluded, “Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man.” To men who prefer a safe strategy, voting became a substitute for action and politics became a sort of game, like checkers or backgammon, only with a slight moral tinge. To Thoreau, anyone willing to leave moral decisions to the will of the majority was not really concerned that right should prevail. When resisting the poll tax, Thoreau did not consult the majority; he acted. If he had allowed the majority to decide whether or not he should pay, by his own standards, he would have shown no regard for what is right.
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I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”
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