[Vision2020] Gandhi, King, and Thoreau: Principles of Civil Disobedience

[Phil Nisbet]

Nick

Glad you liked the article on Mike, he is a man who deserves the praise for 
trying to put the arts in Heart of the Arts that we here have as a slogan.

As for the article, I think it worth posting the following response;

While there is much to be admired in the non-violent protest behavior of a 
man like Gandhi, there are problems in the real world which his solution 
simply does not cover.  As a primary example, from his own life time, Gandhi 
suggested that non-violence should be used by the Jewish Populations of 
Europe as a means to halt the Holocaust.  Even in 1946, when he was fully 
aware of what the Germans had done, Gandhi told his biographer Louis Fisher: 
"The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should 
have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs." and this would have 
presumably convinced the Nazis to stop the action in the Death Camps.

While the ideal of non-violent resistance is workable in cases where the 
government is composed of people who are likely to be embarrassed by things 
like murder of protestors, beating of woman and children and other terrible 
activities, some governments are not bothered.  It is also true that in 
cases where the majority of the people in a country are impacted, they may 
come forward to oppose a violent and repressive regime.  How this works in 
the case where the regime does not care and actively seeks to carry out 
violence and where the target of the violence of the government and the 
majority is a minority can be readily seen in Rwanda.

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King’s actions worked because at root, the 
majority of Americans found the actions in opposing him reprehensible.  The 
American ideal of freedom for the individual was seriously challenged by the 
presence in the country of the Jim Crow system, so non-violent protest and 
civil disobedience was a workable solution.  But if the same action had 
taken place in Germany in the 1930’s, the result would have been far 
different.

The same goes for the non-violent movement in India.  Yes it won, but it was 
battling the British, who for all of their foibles are at root holders of 
the ideal of individual liberty and the system of law.  Had Gandhi been 
fighting a different regime, one that dehumanized their opposition and that 
had no feeling of embarrassment at murder would he have been successful?

King and Gandhi had wonderful and workable ways for using non-violence as a 
means of political action within Western democratic systems.  Both men are 
deserving of our admiration.  But the system that they preached is not 
universally workable and we forget that at our own peril.

Phil Nisbet



>From: Nick Gier <ngier at uidaho.edu>
>To: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: [Vision2020] Gandhi, King,and Thoreau: Principles of Civil 
>Disobedience
>Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 12:16:02 -0800
>
>Greetings:
>
>I'm getting my King Holiday column out early this year, so that I can 
>improve my chances of placing it.  I'm now a weekly commentator on KRFP.  
>Tune in at 92.5 FM on Wednesday mornings at about 7:45 (repeated later in 
>the AM).  I'll read this column on Jan. 11.
>
>By the way, Phil, I really enjoyed your piece on Wendt.  My former wife was 
>a potter and was really inspired by him.  We also bought lots of clay from 
>him.  My garage is still wired for super high wattage 240 volts.
>
>Also a note to Mr. Crabtree:  I assume that the retired philosophy 
>professor you referred to was yours truly.  The only agenda I have, sir, is 
>that people be honest in their intellectual discourse and their civil 
>dealings. Period.
>
>GANDHI, KING, AND THOREAU:
>FOUR PRINCIPLES OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
>
>By Nick Gier
>True peace is not merely the absence of tension;
>it is the presence of justice.Martin Luther King, Jr.
>
>I'm sure that people have protested unjust laws ever since the first laws 
>were promulgated.  Some scholars claim that Gandhi was influenced by an 
>ancient tradition of civil disobedience in his own country, and we now know 
>that Gandhi protested South African pass laws a year before he read Henry 
>David Thoreau's famous work On Civil Disobedience in 1907. But it cannot be 
>doubted that Thoreau's work did in fact give an intellectual framework for 
>Gandhi's program of active non-violence as well as new ideas for specific 
>forms of non-cooperation.
>
>Thoreau proposed that people, when faced with unjust laws, could "obey 
>them, amend them, . . . or  transgress them."  With respect to the Fugitive 
>Slave Law of 1850, Thoreau chose to transgress.  In eventually supporting 
>the violent acts of John Brown, Thoreau broke with the non-violence 
>resistance to which Gandhi and King consistently adhered.
>
>In July, 1846, Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax and spent one night in 
>jail for his crime.  Thoreau proclaimed that "under a government that 
>imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison."  
>Gandhi and King would go to jail for much longer terms and willingly accept 
>the punishment for breaking the law.
>
>We can now begin to discern several principles of civil disobedience.  The 
>first principle is that you maintain respect for the rule of law even while 
>disobeying the specific law that you perceive as unjust.  Gandhi very much 
>admired Socrates' respect for Athenian law and his decision not to flee 
>when his prison guards were bribed. King was always confident that American 
>democracy would eventually treat his people as equal under the rule of law 
>that he always respected.
>
>The second principle of civil disobedience is that non-violent activists do 
>not seek to undermine the rule of law, but only the repeal of unjust laws. 
>Gandhi and King's demands were clear and simple: laws that discriminated 
>and  disenfranchised must abolished. Indian outcastes, African-Americans, 
>and gays do not want "special rights"; they simply want the rights that all 
>others enjoy.
>
>The third principle of civil disobedience is that one should plead guilty 
>to any violation of the law.  As Gandhi explains: "I am here to . . . 
>submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for 
>what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest 
>duty of a citizen."
>
>Gandhi instructed his disciples to take the penance of their oppressors 
>upon themselves.  Gandhi's tactics were a form of moral and political ju 
>jitzu. Some of Gandhi's judges felt as if they were the ones charged and 
>convicted. Thoreau said that his one night in jail made the state look 
>foolish.
>
>We have now arrived at the fourth principle of civil disobedience: you 
>should attempt to convert your opponent by demonstrating the justice of 
>your cause.  Active nonviolence does not seek, as Gandhi says, "to defeat 
>or humiliate your opponents, but to win their friendship and 
>understanding."
>
>Gandhi would have agreed with King's axiom that "there is within human 
>nature something that can respond to goodness." This is what gave King hope 
>that "the aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved 
>community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness."
>
>There was a strong spiritual dimension to Gandhi's and King's political 
>activism that was absent in Thoreau's. One could criticize them for 
>violating the hallowed separation of politics from religion. The 
>establishment clause certainly does not ban the expression of religious 
>views; rather, it proscribes the favoring of one religion over another.  
>Gandhi's and King's vision was inclusive and nonjudgmental, rather than 
>declarations, such as a recent one by an army officer in uniform that "our 
>God is greater than Allah."
>
>Non-violent resistance to oppressive regimes had a good track record in the 
>late 20th Century.  From the Baltic States, to the Ukraine, and east to the 
>Philippines, ordinary people in dozens of countries have proved Thoreau 
>correct: "When all subjects have refused allegiance, and all officers have 
>resigned from office, then the revolution is accomplished."
>
>Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 
>years.  Excerpts from his book The Virtue of Non-Violence: from Gautama to 
>Gandhi can be read at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vnv.htm.
>
>
>"The god you worship is the god you deserve."
>~~ Joseph Campbell


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