Civil Disobedience Redux

My friend Roger Simon wrote about Civil Disobedience.  Ironically, I have been working on updating Henry Thoreau’s original essay on Civil Disobedience for our time.

First off, the civil disobedience I am talking about has absolutely nothing to do with the recent election. It doesn’t matter if you think the election had hanky panky or not, your rights as an American citizen are being usurped by a tyrannical government.

There is much more to think and write about and I am considering ways to undertake that.  I agree with Roger and others that there is a real movement afoot and it’s not related to a political party or one election.

A person who lived in our society in 1920 would scarcely recognize our society today and it’s not because of the technological and social advances.  People in 1920 had a lot more liberty and choice than people today.

I don’t think many Americans truly understand why Thoreau wrote what he did when he did.  In the 160 years since the essay has been bastardized and twisted to mean what people want it to mean to support the causes they want to support.

For example, after Trump was elected, people marched in the streets and called it “civil disobedience”.  What were they being disobedient against?  What concrete actions save a fake Russian investigation and shampeachment did they do?

Did they refuse to pay taxes?  Participate in society?  No.

It was all political theatre and the root values behind the civil disobedience were strictly political.  They weren’t rooted in the Constitution.  It was an anti-Trump march.  That was no different than the “Tea Party” which were basically anti-Obama demonstrations.

However, today I am seeing something different.  Watch this video.  I don’t think this is an isolated instance at all and have seen echoes of it in other city council meeting over different issues before.

The other day, Dana Loesch put out on Parler that it was time for Civil Disobedience.

Let’s revisit the original essay by Thoreau. It starts.

I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe- “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Does anyone in their right mind think that either the Democrats or the Republicans are torch carriers for the above paragraph?

What we are seeing today isn’t frustration with one particular party as we did in 2016. What we are seeing is a coming revolt against all governments. Why?

When government officials mete out Covid restrictions and then don’t follow them, those restrictions are hollow. When small business people are forced to shutter their businesses, and the government doesn’t lay off one employee, those “we are all in this together” statements are worth as much as what comes out the back end of a bull.

But, it is far more than that as James Meigs chronicles in his article “The Chump Effect”.. Take some time and read that article.  Normal Americans think the game is rigged and based on the evidence, it is. Normal Americans value capitalism and competition. They value limited government. But, with the rise of career politicians and unionized unelected bureaucrats reaching farther and farther into their lives, they have had enough.

Why should politicians and their cronies skate around the law when if we did the same thing the book would be thrown at us?

I am thinking of things like Illinois governor JB Pritzker and his scheme to not pay property taxes.  There are legions of examples all across the country of bureaucrats and government officials doing things like that and getting away with it simply because of their position.

That’s not equal under the eyes of the law and Americans are sick of it.

We are fighting a new kind of discrimination.  It is the discrimination of our government against the private sector.  The private sector is forced to jump through all kinds of meaningless bureaucratic hoops, layering on unnecessary costs to service customers.  Meanwhile, with the stroke of a pen, their government overlords can put them out of business.  Or worse, keep their cronies in business while using the regulatory state to crush the competition.

If we look at history, the stimulus for Thoreau was his disgust with slavery and the American government’s willingness to look the other way and the involvement of America in the Mexican-American War.

Today, the reason for civil disobedience is rooted in the Constitution. Career politicians and unelected bureaucrats are trampling on the rights endowed to us by a Creator. Meanwhile, a PRAVDA like media, print, television, radio and social, enables them by deliberately biasing what they report.

Winston Churchill famously said, “our civil servants are no longer civil and they are no longer servants”.

Thoreau writes, “For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of india-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on business.”

In effect, we don’t need a stimulus bill.  We just need to open up our economy.  In real-time we are seeing a transfer of wealth from the middle-class small businessperson to the big-box corporate retailer and the corporate online retailer.  If we want to cure this problem, let’s use capitalism.

The left-wing Brookings Institution published a study on income inequality and said this, “Between 1967 and 1981, the upper-middle-class tripled in size (from 6% to 18%) and the MMC grew by 3 percentage points (from 47% to 50%). Offsetting these gains was a corresponding shrinkage of the lower middle class (LMC) from 31% to 20% and the poor/near-poor (PNP) from 16% to 11%. In the later period (2002 to 2016), the changes were in the same direction, but more modest.” That data shows free-market capitalism works.  We need more of it.

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

You can no longer be a passive pawn.  You must speak up.  Inaction invites more persecution.  Locally and nationally, but especially locally where you can have more influence.  Margaret Thatcher said, “Socialists get up early in the morning to further their cause.  Capitalists must get up earlier to defend their freedom.”

Margaret Thatcher brought liberty and opportunity back to Great Britain.  She wrested control from the Socialist Fabians who gained power in 1947.   She also said, “It is good to recall how our freedom has been gained in this country—not by great abstract campaigns but through the objections of ordinary men and women to having their money taken from them by the State. In the early days, people banded together and said to the then Government, ‘You shall not take our money before you have redressed our grievances.’ It was their money, their wealth, which was the source of their independence against the Government.”

In America, we are in the same spot today.  It is up to us ordinary citizens to rise up and take our government back from the grifters, the career politicians, the non-government do nothing organizations, the consultants, and bureaucrats.

Thoreau writes, “They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment 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.

Today, Thoreau would see that “standing army et al” as the bureaucracy.

Simply look around yourself today and see the policies we are enforcing with COVID19, and when the bureaucrats look the other way.  Church services and spectator sports are banned but approved protests are allowed.  Politicians eat out, go on junkets and the great unwashed are left to fend for themselves.  149 children under the age of 18 have died across the entire United States yet teachers are being paid not to teach and schools are shuttered.  Defy the cronies and bureaucracy, and inspectors are on your doorstep throwing every law and regulation in the book at you.

How do you do it?  After all, we small government people aren’t ones to go out and march in the street.

1.  Show up in great numbers at local city council, school board and other meetings.  Make your voice heard.  When it’s time, band together behind a few like-minded candidates and take over.
2.  Stay open.  Open your business.  Defy the government and refuse to pay any fines.  If you aren’t a business owner, patronize those businesses.  Hard to do singularly, find other business people on your block and band together.  You might need some armed people in your camp to defend yourself against the mob of bureaucrats that the mayor/governor etc will send out to stop you.
3. Band together and refuse to pay property and income taxes.  Bankrupt them.  They aren’t cutting their patronage businesses and using your money to enable them.  Why support them?

As Thomas Jefferson knew, Only citizens can band together to check the government’s power.  It is time.

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