Thoreau's Thoughts: Murder to the State

As I have scanned daily net postings the past several weeks, an increasing sense of foreboding and helplessness has begun to overwhelm me. The continued spectacle of "elected" officials who are certifiably psychopathic in their behavior – who work only for more war – who work tirelessly to advance the corporatist hegemony of Amerika, Inc., over every square inch of the globe – who take every opportunity to flagrantly violate all laws of decency and morality –  cannot help but depress the spirits of any thinking human. Particularly disturbing is the manifest complicity of the mainstream media in the advancement of these evil endeavors. The way in which the press continues to empower these great criminals is staggering, indeed!

Arrogant and deceitful and mean-spirited – murderous! - these people and their fellow travelers think nothing of the deaths of millions of innocents and the material and economic destruction of vast swaths of the planet in pursuit of their imperial dreams. Claiming divine guidance, they march forth on a quest to enslave the entire population of this tiny plant to their service. Claiming to be "pro-life", they worship death. Claiming to be for peace, they implement endless war. Their avarice and greed, their appetite for power and control, their delight in the shedding of oceans of blood, appear to be insatiable. Sadly, such behavior is nothing new in the annals of despotism and Empire.

What makes this particular incarnation uniquely disturbing, however, is a level of technological "progress" that enables the destruction of the entire human race at the push of a button. When this fact is accompanied by an announced policy to carry out the button-pushing preemptively and unilaterally should the bully's demands not be met, then we have entered dangerous times, indeed!

In reflecting on this dire state of affairs, I was recently motivated to re-read the political essays of Henry David Thoreau. I had not visited this great man's writings since my college days and, consequently, it was both delightful and affirming to discover his thoughts anew. His political writings have been gathered in a 2007 edition by David M. Gross titled, My Thoughts are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy (ISBN 978-1434804266). I heartily recommend this small volume for addition to your bookshelf!

Though Thoreau's focus was often on the injustice of chattel slavery, his thoughts are as fresh and insightful as they were in the 1840's. His diagnosis of the ills of the United States government of his time seems to be an amazingly accurate description of the Leviathan we suffer under today. Virtually nothing has changed. He bravely spoke out against unjust government policies and behavior, politicians, unjust courts, the press (his descriptions accurately apply to the mainstream media of 2007), unjust wars, and slavery. Nothing has changed. Even slavery lives on in the form of the twenty-first century corporatized plantation on which we all struggle to maintain our humanity.

In summary, Thoreau's words are worth consideration today. Where are such men (and women) of principle in our time? Herewith follows an excerpt from:

Slavery in Massachusetts
by Henry David Thoreau

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?

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.

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. 

Robert S. Dotson, M.D.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee

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