I’ve noted before that I interpret the trajectory of my life, from my enlistment in the Navy at age 17, to my early interest in the so-called Great Books of the Western World, to my conversion to Roman Catholicism, to my decision to go to law school, to my conversion to Quakerism, as a quest to understand and participate more deeply in the common sense and common wisdom of the society in which I live and from which I grew. Indeed, I can directly trace my gradual conversion to philosophical anarchism back to a conscious decision I made about 7 or so years ago to study and consider more closely the American Revolution and the establishment of the Constitution. As I recall, the first book I read in this endeavor was Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and the second book I read was Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington by Richard Brookhiser.

It’s been said that everything worth saying has already been said. There is nothing new under the sun. Our thoughts aren’t as original as we think. If I quote some luminary from the past, as I quoted Thoreau in my previous post, it’s probably partly because he’s said what I think better than I ever could and partly because I value and wish to invoke a tradition that unites us. I remember our class being assigned to read Thoreau (and not just Walden) by a public school teacher in the public high school I attended. My instincts are the opposite of heretical. I regard myself as a true disciple of the one true and self-evident religion. A “radical,” etymologically, is simply one who is drawn to the “root” of the matter. Where are the branches united if not at the root?

A note on Thoreau’s “Slavery in Massachusetts,” which I quoted at length in my last post: A modern reader might be inclined to think Thoreau’s essay not relevant today, since he was writing about the Fugitive Slave Law, and we have abolished Slavery. To the contrary, Thoreau was writing about an enormity committed by the State against a single man:

For my part, my old and wor­thi­est pur­suits have lost I can­not say how much of their at­trac­tion, and I feel that my in­vest­ment in life here is worth many per cent less since Mas­sa­chu­setts last de­lib­er­ately sent back an in­no­cent man, Anthony Burns, to slav­ery.

We are fools if we cannot point to similar enormities deliberately and openly in the light of day committed against innocent men by the State and with our “consent” in the past year. Do we really imagine ourselves to be so much better than Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, or than the citizens of Massachusetts who suffered Anthony Burns to be robbed by a judge of his very freedom?

“I am more and more con­vinced that, with ref­er­ence to any pub­lic ques­tion, it is more im­por­tant to know what the coun­try thinks of it than what the city thinks. The city does not think much. On any moral ques­tion, I would rather have the opin­ion of Box­boro’ than of Bos­ton and New York put to­gether. When the former speaks, I feel as if some­body had spoken, as if hu­man­ity was yet, and a rea­son­a­ble be­ing had as­serted its rights — as if some un­prej­u­diced men among the coun­try’s hills had at length turned their at­ten­tion to the sub­ject, and by a few sen­si­ble words re­deemed the rep­u­ta­tion of the race. When, in some ob­scure coun­try town, the farm­ers come to­gether to a spe­cial town-meet­ing, to ex­press their opin­ion on some sub­ject which is vex­ing the land, that, I think, is the true Con­gress, and the most re­spect­a­ble one that is ever as­sem­bled in the United States. [¶24]

. . .

“The ef­fect of a good gov­ern­ment is to make life more val­u­a­ble — of a bad one, to make it less val­u­a­ble. We can af­ford that rail­road and all merely ma­te­rial stock should lose some of its value, for that only com­pels us to live more sim­ply and ec­o­nom­i­cally; but sup­pose that the value of life it­self should be di­min­ished! How can we make a less de­mand on man and na­ture, how live more ec­o­nom­i­cally in re­spect to vir­tue and all no­ble qualities, than we do? I have lived for the last month — and I think that every man in Mas­sa­chu­setts ca­pa­ble of the sen­ti­ment of pa­tri­ot­ism must have had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence — with the sense of hav­ing suf­fered a vast and in­def­i­nite loss. I did not know at first what ailed me. At last it oc­curred to me that what I had lost was a coun­try. I had never re­spected the gov­ern­ment near to which I lived, but I had fool­ishly thought that I might man­age to live here, mind­ing my pri­vate af­fairs, and forget it. For my part, my old and wor­thi­est pur­suits have lost I can­not say how much of their at­trac­tion, and I feel that my in­vest­ment in life here is worth many per cent less since Mas­sa­chu­setts last de­lib­er­ately sent back an in­no­cent man, Anthony Burns, to slav­ery. I dwelt be­fore, per­haps, in the il­lu­sion that my life passed some­where only be­tween heaven and hell, but now I can­not per­suade my­self that I do not dwell wholly within hell. The site of that po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­za­tion called Mas­sa­chu­setts is to me mor­ally cov­ered with vol­canic sco­riae and cin­ders, such as Mil­ton de­scribes in the in­fer­nal re­gions. If there is any hell more un­prin­ci­pled than our rul­ers, and we, the ruled, I feel cu­ri­ous to see it. Life itself be­ing worth less, all things with it, which min­is­ter to it, are worth less. Sup­pose you have a small li­brary, with pic­tures to adorn the walls — a gar­den laid out around — and con­tem­plate sci­en­tific and lit­er­ary pur­suits, &c., and dis­cover all at once that your villa, with all its con­tents is lo­cated in hell, and that the jus­tice of the peace has a clo­ven foot and a forked tail — do not these things sud­denly lose their value in your eyes? [¶46]

“I feel that, to some ex­tent, the State has fa­tally in­ter­fered with my law­ful busi­ness. It has not only in­ter­rupted me in my pas­sage through Court Street on er­rands of trade, but it has in­ter­rupted me and every man on his on­ward and up­ward path, on which he had trusted soon to leave Court Street far be­hind. What right had it to re­mind me of Court Street? I have found that hol­low which even I had re­lied on for solid. [¶47]

“I am sur­prised to see men go­ing about their busi­ness as if noth­ing had hap­pened. I say to my­self, “Un­for­tu­nates! they have not heard the news.” I am sur­prised that the man whom I just met on horse­back should be so ear­nest to over­take his newly bought cows run­ning away — since all prop­erty is in­se­cure, and if they do not run away again, they may be taken away from him when he gets them. Fool! does he not know that his seed-corn is worth less this year — that all be­nef­i­cent har­vests fail as you ap­proach the em­pire of hell? No pru­dent man will build a stone house un­der these cir­cum­stances, or en­gage in any peace­ful en­ter­prise which it re­quires a long time to ac­com­plish. Art is as long as ever, but life is more in­ter­rupted and less avail­a­ble for a man’s proper pur­suits. It is not an era of re­pose. We have used up all our in­her­ited free­dom. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them. [¶48]

“I walk toward one of our ponds; but what sig­ni­fies the beauty of na­ture when men are base? We walk to lakes to see our se­ren­ity re­flected in them; when we are not se­rene, we go not to them. Who can be se­rene in a coun­try where both the rul­ers and the ruled are with­out prin­ci­ple? The re­mem­brance of my coun­try spoils my walk. My thoughts are mur­der to the State, and in­vol­un­ta­rily go plot­ting against her. [¶49]

“But it chanced the other day that I scented a white wa­ter-lily, and a sea­son I had waited for had ar­rived. It is the em­blem of pu­rity. It bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, as if to show us what pu­rity and sweet­ness re­side in, and can be ex­tracted from, the slime and muck of earth. I think I have plucked the first one that has opened for a mile. What con­fir­ma­tion of our hopes is in the fra­grance of this flower! I shall not so soon de­spair of the world for it, not­with­stand­ing slav­ery, and the cow­ard­ice and want of prin­ci­ple of North­ern men. It sug­gests what kind of laws have pre­vailed long­est and wid­est, and still pre­vail, and that the time may come when man’s deeds will smell as sweet. Such is the odor which the plant emits. If Na­ture can com­pound this fra­grance still an­nually, I shall be­lieve her still young and full of vigor, her in­teg­rity and genius un­im­paired, and that there is vir­tue even in man, too, who is fit­ted to per­ceive and love it. It re­minds me that Na­ture has been part­ner to no Mis­souri Com­pro­mise. I scent no com­pro­mise in the fra­grance of the wa­ter-lily. It is not a Nym­phæa Doug­lasii. In it, the sweet, and pure, and in­no­cent are wholly sun­dered from the ob­scene and bale­ful. I do not scent in this the time-serv­ing ir­res­o­lu­tion of a Mas­sa­chu­setts Gov­er­nor, nor of a Bos­ton Mayor. So be­have that the odor of your ac­tions may en­hance the gen­eral sweet­ness of the at­mos­phere, that when we be­hold or scent a flower, we may not be re­minded how in­con­sis­tent your deeds are with it; for all odor is but one form of ad­ver­tise­ment of a moral qual­ity, and if fair ac­tions had not been per­formed, the lily would not smell sweet. The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the de­cay of hu­man­ity; the fra­grant flower that springs from it, for the pu­rity and cour­age which are immortal. [¶50]

“Slav­ery and ser­vil­ity have pro­duced no sweet-scented flower an­nually, to charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they are merely a de­cay­ing and a death, of­fen­sive to all healthy nos­trils. We do not com­plain that they live, but that they do not get bur­ied. Let the liv­ing bury them: even they are good for manure.” [¶51]

— Henry David Thoreau’s “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854)

Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished; but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution. Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good? Is there any necessity for a man’s being a tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves? Is it the intention of law-makers that good men shall be hung ever? Are judges to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit? What right have you to enter into a compact with yourself that you will do thus or so, against the light within you? Is it for you to make up your mind, — to form any resolution whatever, — and not accept the convictions that are forced upon you, and which ever pass your understanding? I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases. Business men may arrange that among themselves. If they were the interpreters of the everlasting laws which rightfully bind man, that would be another thing. A counterfeiting law-factory, standing half in a slave land and half in free! What kind of laws for free men can you expect from that?

I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character, — his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.

The post I was going to write, until I got sidetracked, would have been prompted by the piquant comments IOZ incurred for declaring himself a radical but not a revolutionary. It would have cited Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience:

It is not a man’s duty, as a mat­ter of course, to de­vote him­self to the erad­i­cat­ion of any, even the most enor­mous wrong; he may still prop­erly have other con­cerns to en­gage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it prac­ti­cally his sup­port. If I de­vote my­self to other pur­suits and con­tem­plat­ions, I must first see, at least, that I do not pur­sue them sit­ting upon an­other man’s shoul­ders. I must get off him first, that he may pur­sue his con­tem­plat­ions too. See what gross in­con­sis­tency is tol­er­a­ted. I have heard some of my towns­men say, “I should like to have them or­der me out to help put down an in­sur­rec­tion of the slaves, or to march to Mex­ico, — see if I would go;” and yet these very men have each, di­rectly by their al­le­giance, and so in­di­rectly, at least, by their money, fur­nished a sub­sti­tute.

. . .

As for adopt­ing the ways which the State has pro­vided for rem­edy­ing the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man’s life will be gone. I have other af­fairs to at­tend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not ev­ery thing to do, but some­thing; and be­cause he can­not do ev­ery thing, it is not nec­es­sary that he should do some­thing wrong. It is not my busi­ness to be pe­ti­tion­ing the governor or the legislature any more than it is theirs to pe­ti­tion me; and, if they should not hear my pe­ti­tion, what should I do then? But in this case the State has pro­vided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stub­born and un­con­cil­i­a­tory; but it is to treat with the ut­most kind­ness and con­sid­er­ation the only spirit that can ap­pre­ci­ate or de­serves it. So is all change for the bet­ter, like birth and death which con­vulse the body.

. . .

How­ever, the gov­ern­ment does not con­cern me much, and I shall be­stow the few­est pos­si­ble thoughts on it. It is not many mo­ments that I live un­der a gov­ern­ment, even in this world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imag­i­na­tion-free, that which is not never for a long time ap­pear­ing to be to him, un­wise rulers or re­form­ers can­not fa­tally in­ter­rupt him.

The post I would have written if I hadn’t gotten sidetracked would also have cited Albert Jay Nock on Isaiah’s Job:

The prophet’s career began at the end of King Uzziah’s reign, say about 740 B.C. This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous. It was one of those prosperous reigns, however – like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington – where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash.

In the year of Uzziah’s death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. “Tell them what a worthless lot they are.” He said, “Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.”

Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job – in fact, he had asked for it – but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so – if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start – was there any sense in starting it? “Ah,” the Lord said, “you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.”

But as a practical matter what do we do with these truths? The people are not yet ripe for Revolution, and if the history of the American Revolution and of the United States is any indication mere regime change does not necessarily lead to an increase in liberty or justice. We can hope for and/or fear the outright collapse of the State, but there’s little we can do to either bring about or prevent such a cataclysm, and if it were to happen there’s a very good chance a new band of robbers as bad as the ones in power now would arise to form a new State. No, as Thoreau wrote, only “when men are prepared for it” will they have the kind of “government . . . which governs not at all,” and men are not now prepared for it and probably won’t be for some time.

So again, what do we do with these truths? It is something simply to communicate them to others, since they are not often heard, and thereby do our part to hasten the day when men will be “prepared.” Doing so is not without risk in these United States, and I for one have to be concerned that just by expressing these truths publicly I place my license to practice law in jeopardy. (Fortunately, while I’ll defend on principle my right to practice law if it comes to that, I’m largely indifferent to the prospect of losing my law license, and part of me feels like the powers that be would be doing me a favor by disbarring me.)

Beyond that, I can commend as practitioners and exemplars of practical and constructive anarchism people like David Gross and J. Tony Serra.

But most importantly, we who love liberty can’t allow our lives to be defined and consumed by our opposition to the State. Our lives are greater than that. I’m reminded that life is both fleeting and “charged with the grandeur of God.” The State, like Sin itself, has been poisoning the world long before I got here, and more than likely will go on poisoning it long after I’m gone. Yesterday I happened to be reading an “autobiographical sketch” written by my favorite political philosopher, Albert Jay Nock, shortly before his death in 1945, and noted these words in the penultimate paragraph:

My only failure in emotional self-control which so far has seemed unconquerable is brought about by my hearing a certain order of music or by reading prose or verse that is composed in the grand style. Not even as a child have I ever shed tears for grief or pain, but a suite of Bach or certain quartettes of Haydn will put them beyond my control. So also will choruses of Aeschylus and Sophocles, as passages from English prose writers such as Bishop Butler, William Law, the Cambridge Platonists.

Nock’s reference to William Law in particular reminded me that Law was featured prominently in Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy, a book which impressed me greatly when I read it a few years ago. Huxley wrote there of Law:

Granted that the ground of the individual soul is akin to, or identical with, the divine Ground of all existence, and granted that this divine Ground is an ineffable Godhead that manifests itself as personal God or even as the incarnate Logos, what is the ultimate nature of good and evil, and what the true purpose and last end of human life?

The answers to these questions will be given to a great extent in the words of that most surprising product of the English eighteenth century, William Law. (How very odd our educational system is! Students of English literature are forced to read the graceful journalism of Steele and Addison, are expected to know all about the minor novels of Defoe and the tiny elegances of Matthew Prior. But they can pass all their examinations summa cum laude without having so much as looked into the writings of a man who was not only a master of English prose, but also one of the most interesting thinkers of his period and one of the most endearingly saintly figures in the whole history of Anglicanism.) Our current neglect of Law is yet another of the many indications that twentieth-century educators have ceased to be concerned with questions of ultimate truth or meaning and (apart from mere vocational training) are interested solely in the dissemination of a rootless and irrelevant culture, and the fostering of the solemn foolery of scholarship for scholarship’s sake.

Huxley noted in his Bibliography of Recommended Books that “many of Law’s finest works, such as The Spirit of Love and The Spirit of Prayer, have not been reprinted in recent years and are hard to come by.” Thanks to the power of the internet, that is no longer the case:

The Spirit of Prayer

The Spirit of Love