Thursday, January 27,1983
Daily Nebraskan
5
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HeGniiy u Cuoo'eaco sBnoony Imve beeoD Deft" m mi m jp
Mrs. Lmerson must have had a mean
streak in her to name her kid Ralph Waldo,
but that's beside the point.
One fine day in 1846, the great Ameri
can philosopher was strolling and decided
to stop by the local slammer and visit his
sidekick in the history of Western thought.
David
Wood
-J i 111 :, . ttt .
Henry David Thoreau. Lmerson is on
the record as thinking that the fix Thoreau
had got himself into was "skulking and in
bad taste."
"Henry," he said reprovingly, "what
are you doing in there?"
Thoreau was the more curt of the two
and cracked, "Waldo, what are you doing
out there?"
Thoreau was a tasteless upstart, of
course. Skulking about his cell raising a
stink, he had lots of time for brooding and
brainstormed the famous manifesto he'd
later write, "Civil Disobedience." Good
Americans still tell you lie was a good
American. But he was "mad at the devil,"
the sheriff said.
"Must the citizen ever for a moment,
or in the least degree, resign his conscience
to the legislator?" Thoreau wrote in the
essay, noticeably pumped up. "1 think
we should be men first, and subjects after
ward. The only obligation which I have a
right to assume is to do at any time what I
think right."
He was in the clink for thinking it
right to space off six years of taxes. Iking
a prominent figure.it was a Sophia Loren
kind of thing. A bit more pompous than
she, Thoreau said he didn't want his dol
lars supporting a government that sup
ported slavery and the Mexican War.
Miffed, he ranted. "I say " he raved,
"break the law. Let your life be a counter
friction to stop the machine."
Remember, he wasn't your average
caged hothead, lie was a purveyor of
America's first genuine native philosophy.
And, when incensed, he could be eloquent.
Abbey Hoffman was never so smooth.
I bet old Lmerson had no snappy come
back to the stinging, ringing words:
"Under a government which imprisons
any unjustly, the true place for a just man
is also a prison."
Thus spake the good American, the
honorable free-thinker. "The state never
intentionally confronts a man's sense,
intellectual or moral, but only his body,
his senses. It is not armed with superior
wit or honesty, but with superior physical
strength. I was not born to be forced. I
will breathe after my own fashion."
Well excuse me, Henry, for invading
your space. The point's this: The man's
clearly a slippery anarchist. And the
skulker's place in history is a grievous
mistake. The thankless crank should v
been left to stew in his juices, Sophia
Loren should be stamping license plates,
and there ought to be stiff laws against
civil disobedience.
I riotously applaud President Reagan's
proposal last week to deny college loans to
the scarcdy-cats, peace-niks and other
ne'er-do-wells who didn't register for the
current draft. Our forefathers lied con
scription in their native lands to build
this home of the brave and the free. Our
armies must be ready to fly into combat
at the least threat to our forefathers'
dream.
Reagan's plan is ingenious. It unfairly
discriminates against financially disad-.
van t aged draft resisters who pursue higher
education. Universities and colleges are un
checked hotbeds of libertarian lunacy and
the exact last place we want hundreds of
thousands of juvenile outlaws hiding out.
Let them read Thoreau and free-thinking
insurrectionists like him and they'll be
spouting logical whammies that are no
concern in ruling a state.
"Unjust laws exist," Thoreau, the
smoolhy, wrote. "Shall we be content to
obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend
them and obey them until we have suc
ceeded, or shall we transgress them im
mediately?" This is pure dupery, as if we had
choices, let alone these. Ours is but to do
or die. United we stand.
"Government at its best is an exped
ient; but most governments are usually,
and all governments are sometimes, in
expedient," he wrote. "The objections
which have been brought against a stand
ing army, and they are many and weighty
and deserve to prevail, may also at last
be brought against a standing govern
ment." Frankly, I'd first die. If every simper
ing humanist was packed off to Walden
Pond and rocked out to their different
drummers, away from the mainstream,
America would be a safer place.
EDITOR
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