Thoreau: "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government"
Blazing Reader,
In response to an excerpt I posted on Wednesday, from my forthcoming semi-historical fiction, Covid Disobedience, one dear reader wrote to say:
"That point about extreme oppression being used to justify a milder version doesn't quite land for me."
It doesn't land well for me either.
Maybe I should have added "erroneously used to justify," because the chapter and Thoreau ace arguing that just because things were intolerable in 1840s Scotland, it doesn't make a lesser form of oppression acceptable in America.
"History has shown that abrupt overthrows of entire governance systems rarely lead to lasting freedom (think French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution or even as recent as the Arab Spring)."
Isn't that because they replace one government with another government? They never replace it with freedom (no government). It's kind of like changing the plantation owners, but keeping the plantation.
"Incremental change, both collectively and individually, tends to hold more potential."
That was essentially the path Thoreau argued for in his 1849 essay, Civil Disobedience:
"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."
In other words: a better plantation first. Then no plantation.
I wonder if Thoreau would still hold to that philosophy. It's been 176 years since he wrote those words. With all the shenanigans on both sides of the political aisle, would he find Washington has evolved into a "better government"?
John C.A. Manley
P.S. For an unforgettable film about "changing plantation owners" as a metaphor for pseudo-political revolutions, check out Jones Plantation.
John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.