DAMNOCRACY - Government From Hell
columnist: Wendall Dennis

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, Henry David Thoreau about 140 year ago.

"I heartily accept the motto - That government is best which governs least.

This American government - what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity.

It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves; and, if ever they should use it in earnest as a real one against each other, it will surely split. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government that they have.

Government shows, thus, how successfully men can be imposed upon, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. How does it become a man to behave toward his American government today?

I answer that he cannot, without disgrace, be associated with it.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government when it's tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

Men, generally, under a government such as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. It makes it worse.

Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?

The authority of government even such as I am willing to submit to -for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well - is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed.

It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. There will never be a really free and enlightened state, until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

I please myself with imagining a state at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellowmen.

A state which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious state, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen."

 Thanks Mr. Thoreau, we needed that!  And the struggle continues unabated! 

Wendall Dennis