When Laws Should Not Be Obeyed

by Doug Dowd

One need not believe that those who practice or advocate civil disobedience are always on the side of the angels to perceive that most arguments against it today are either Irrelevant or absurd. Such arguments are irrelevant when they take as an unstated assumption that we live in what are, after all, normal times, for such arguments assume that normal procedures are all that is necessary to right the (real or imagined) wrongs seen by those who would civilly disobey.

Work within the law, energetically, and, at most, work energetically and within the law to change the law. If your arguments are valid, they will in time prevail.To place oneself above the law is an act of arrogance, an invitation to anarchy; what's worse, how can one argue against the KKK's breaking of, say, civil rights legislation; if one is himself a lawbreaker? That such arguments, in fuller display, are irrelevant will be argued below; that they are absurd, as well, we may turn to now.

There are two major areas of concern that have bled to principled law-breaking in recent years — those having to do with racial equality and those having to do with the war in Vietnam. In the former case, blacks and their white allies have deliberately broken segregationist laws, sometimes simply to do away with them, at other times to force the creation of new laws protecting those who would work toward an egalitarian racial code. In. the early years  of that movement, we  allowed, ourselves to believe that the Jim Crow, laws of the South were the principal (even the sole) target, we have subsequently recognized that the North too has its (subtler) ways of keeping  the races in their places. And so, sit-ins in the South, black and white together at restaurants, and a host of other law-breaking activities; and in the North, symbolically at first, more than that later, garbage strewn on Manhattan's bridges; illegal marches in Milwaukee. And so on.

In some cases, the easy ones, one could say that unjust laws  were being challenged, and that higher courts would rule them so. But in the case of Father Groppi, say, it was not an unjust law, but an immoral city that was being challenged. The law was being broken as a means of forcing a community to change its immoral, not its illegal, ways. Those who argue against such civil disobedience are absurd (when they are not dishonest), for they are saying in effect “wait.” The problem in such cases is a problem of powerlessness, where the power of the status quo — as manifested in institutions and in attitudes — is such as to guaranteed that into the foreseeable future nothing will change. But change does not come about without power to bring it about; and the power to do so comes clearly not from persuasion alone. It comes from persuasion matched by the drama of individuals willing to break the law, a drama which, if it' is a drama of decency, will find more and more players on its stage; and which, ultimately, will convince those who hold formal power that what they hold is too hot to handle. Those who argue against such practices are absurd when they neglect the powerlessness of those who would change society; when they argue that those who hold the power will, in the fullness of time, change their, ways. They have not, and they will not; as, by now, we all know.

But of course there is not as much ferment against that kind of civil disobedience as there is against the kind that militates against the war, and the draft system. One has by now heard many arguments against those who have joined the draft resistance. Let us concentrate on the question of turning in one's card, and refusing induction. The impulse behind such an act is made up of opposition to what is deemed an immoral war, and a war which, moreover, is powered in vital part by an immoral selective service system. Why must one behave in such a precipitous fashion? Why cannot those see the war and the draft as immoral set about, stopping the war and transforming the draft system through.existing, legal, channels? (And, of course, working with the draft system, the army, and the war, right up to, and into, Vietnam; right up to burning down villages, shooting suspected Vietcong, irrespective of age, sex, or whatever; working with, and strengthening the system, and in doing so, depriving oneself and the peace movement of one more mind and body.)

Well, one can be drafted well before one scan vote: and that creates a problem so far as influencing one's representatives is concerned. And if one holds on to his exemption as a student (or as a C.O., or as a vital person,. etc,) he has to contemplate the many millions of others who do not possess his privileges, his rare ability to know about and gain the C.O., his skills. One has to contemplate an immoral system of selective service acting to prop up what one considers to be a more generally immoral system. One has to, in short, wait, and hope, even pray; but one cannot, legally, change anything at all until, at the very earliest, after the next election (on the unlikely assumption that, say, McCarthy is elected 'president and does all the things one hopes he will do). Meanwhile, the war goes on at an accelerating rate, and it can well be internationalized before next November; before next November larger portions of Vietnam and its people will have been destroyed.

To get to the point a bit more rapidly: If our complaint were that a law of property was unjust, perhaps in all conscience we could wait, should wait. But if our complaint, our cry, is that Vietnamese and Americans today are dying in a horrifying and immoral war — and one that -worsens every day — and that there is no reason to believe that normal procedures are going to stop that in time (in time means now, yesterday); then in all conscience one must act-drastically. Like the KKK? Not at all.

The KKK use means of violence to prevent the achievement of social justice, to prevent the obliteration of social injustice. They work in secret, they beat, and kill, and burn, and bully. They cannot and do not stand in the sun where they can be seen, and they work against the highest principles of religion, humanism, and political principle stemming from western, civilization; as they work to keep us from becoming civilized. And the draft resisters? They break one or more laws: publicly, at their own cost (and a substantial cost), without violence, without harm to others, with the opposite of reward. And why? Because, first, they cannot serve in an immoral war that would destroy through subjugation and killing; second, because they do not choose to cooperate with an immoral system, even though through such cooperation they would themselves lose nothing (but their souls?) and would indeed gain (what the society considers to be) quite a lot; and third, has someone. found another way to stop the war?

On that last point, I know of no draft resisters who think they are by their individual acts going to stop the war; and most of them do not take that as their prime consideration. But they, and I, and the government all know that if enough of us resist the draft in whatever ways we can; the moral example set by the draft resisters has at least a finite chance of becoming politically effective. By itself, of course, a few thousands or tens of thousands of draft resisters as a movement will not being an end .to the war; but combined, with the other multitudinous and swelling sources of opposition to the war, and to our. increasing inability even to hold our own militarily in Vietnam, who is sure that the draft resistance will not be politically effective?

And if, after all things are considered, we decide that it cannot be politically effective? What then?. Shall we take the counsel of a law professor at Cornell who, though himself against the war and a critic of the selective service system, said we must obey the law, even if that means that we go into the Army and go, even, to Vietnam. We must go, even to Vietnam, with a heavy. heart, having chosen the lesser of two evils. The lesser of the two evils in this case, is to defy one's sense of morality in order to live up to a conventional sense of legality.

Where such counsel would have left Socrates, Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, or Thomas Jefferson, say, one will not ask. One does ask, however: “Is there ever a point at which the laws of one's society can no longer: be obeyed?” Surely everyone who is human  will answer yes to that question, the debate being only about where the point might be. That point has been reached in the United States, reached and passed.

Nobody who reads these words will ever have found reason, publicly or secretly, to applaud the actions of the KKK. But almost all, if only secretly, are pleased that there are those who have the courage, and the ethical, sense to defy the draft. What one applauds, one should consider joining; and, at the very least, one should support those whom one applauds.

Especially today.

June 24, 2003