Thoreau's Principle of Resistance

In an op-ed article in the New York Times, undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas asks: “What will you do when they start rounding us up?” He is referring to the announced persecution of immigrants by the forthcoming U.S. government, under the pretext that it seeks “dangerous criminals.” He asks U.S. citizens and residents to think about what their actions will be when the time comes.

One option, I suggest, is to uphold Henry David Thoreau's principle of resistance to civil government.

In 1849, Henry David Thoreau asked a similar question regarding unjust laws. At the time, the U.S. Constitution still enshrined slavery, the U.S. Government had started the Mexican-American war in foreign soil, and Fugitive Slave Acts would soon be passed by Congress. Thoreau objected to all of these. At the same time, he knew he could not fight every injustice.

So he asked: “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

His answer was nuanced: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth — certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

Some unjust laws, if their range of influence is limited, can be left alone until they become untenable in society or disruptive of the government itself, so that executive disobedience or legislative reform becomes necessary. But when a law requires a person to act unjustly towards another, it must be broken.

The Fugitive Slave Act, which required collaboration in returning runaway slaves in the North to their owners in the South, became a perfect example of a law that had to be disobeyed. Every person's moral sense clearly perceived the injustice of the law, just as conscience, when not blinded by expediency and contempt, clearly apprehended the injustice of slavery itself.

If the U.S. Government begins actively to persecute immigrants – especially but not exclusively those who were brought as minors –, or to obligate Muslims to register in lists for surveillance, or to restrict civil liberties wholesale, it will be requiring grave injustice from collaborating citizens. Then all citizens who are committed to justice, not to mere written law or policy, must disobey and let Government feel the full force of their principled resistance.

We must be aware, attentive, and responsive to the just demands of moral sense. Then we might be revolutionaries for justice: “Action from principle — the perception and the performance of right — changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary.”