It may seem paradoxical that in these highly charged and inexplicable political times, like when a would-be presidential candidate claiming undocumented immigrants are eating household pets (as Dave Barry would say, I’m not making this up!) that the words of a man who spent two years, two months and two days in the peace and quiet and isolation of Walden woods could offer perspective, comfort and resolution. Maybe getting away from society enabled him to truly see it.
There is no doubt that Henry Thoreau would be crestfallen about what we’re seeing and hearing on a daily basis from our political leaders. He would also not be surprised.
To me, Thoreau was one of our clearest-eyed political thinkers and writers. Perhaps having the opportunity to witness the first three-quarters of our first century of American politics, he had some sensible observations about what a government ought to do and what, as citizens, we should expect.
Though I think some people misread the opening sentence of “On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience” — note that he calls it a duty — Thoreau was not suggesting we have no government but simply a better one.
He writes: “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.”
Off of what 67 million of us witnessed Tuesday night, men (and women, which I am adding here, I don’t think Henry would mind) are more assuredly “not prepared for it.” We are not ready for a government that governs not at all; the question we face now is how much do we want it to govern, particularly when it comes to the human rights of fully half of our population (and perhaps the wiser) — women?
Thoreau offers a solution. But you wonder, are we ready for that? Will we ever be ready for that?
He writes: “(t)o 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 (and woman) make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”
For some of us, evidently, that would be more or less a dictatorship, where a nearly all-powerful and immune (Thanks, Supreme Court) leader could tell us what books we could and couldn’t read, who would get the advantages of major tax breaks, what we could say and write about our leaders, what a woman must comply with regarding her own body.
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For many of the rest of us, that type of anti-democracy is abhorrent; it’s not why we fought King George all those years ago, not why Abraham Lincoln insisted on keeping the Union together at great cost to both sides, not why so many countries around the globe continue to look to us for guidance, inspiration and at times, protection.
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So how do we solve this dilemma. Thoreau’s solution is this and it’s idealistic but not, I don’t think, any more idealistic than what Thomas Jefferson wrote in our Declaration of Independence.
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Thoreau writes: “Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?…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 (and women) 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….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.”
“For the right,” Thoreau challenges us. Instead of having a blind allegiance to “the law” (or authority or political party), what does your conscience tell you? Have we forgotten or moved past that part of the equation? Is there so much venom and hatred out there on either side of the political coin that recognizing the difference between right and wrong is impossible?
With so much anger and tension and misinformation in the air — spouting made-up statistics, distorted positions, flat-out lies — everyone has an agenda, it seems, even transmitting the most innocuous bit of information raises suspicion on either side.
If today’s Wall Street Journal headline, recognized as a Republican-friendly newspaper, runs a front-page story suggesting that inflation continues to drop and that information runs absolutely contrary to what a candidate is suggesting in his daily missives, what is a voter to do? Are you a believer or not? It seems we have reached a place — sadly — where everything is debatable, arguable, disputed from the very first word.
If only we could find — listen to — a voice of reason, someone who would be willing to steer our crumbling democracy back to the path of fairness, justice, freedom and away from the bitter partisanship that so blinds us.
Later, in “On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience” Thoreau offers this wise parting shot. If only both sides would heed it.
“The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual,” he writes and if he was around now, that would obviously include women and their individual human rights.
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“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.”
Thoreau perhaps even hints at those who weren’t native to our country: Seeing them as neighbors not intruders.
“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 fellow-men.”
“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.”
Me, either, Henry. Me, either.
John Nogowski is the author of “Nashua: How Ronald Reagan led us to Donald Trump” available now on Amazon.
