Welcome to Sanctimonious Sunday, a new series that will be published by members of the following groups: The Amateur Left, Team DFH and Frustrati, as a collaboration of sorts. Feel free to get your sanctimonious on. It's welcome here. Last week's installment.
December 10, 2010
He [President Obama] dismissed his Democratic critics as "sanctimonious" and obsessed with staking out a "purist position." He said they hold views so unrealistic that, by their measure of success, "we will never get anything done." - Washington Post
December 15, 2010
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. - Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
A very few [of the mass of men], [such] as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. - Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
What’s all this brouhaha, you say? Well, pragmatic citizen, you’ve wandered into another installment of Sanctimonious Sundays, a place bristling with inconvenience for consumers of expediency. Do not relax. Do not make yourself comfortable. If you think it'll help, go ahead and change into your one shirt not made by enslaved children. But don’t blame me if it feels a little tight around the collar before we’re done.
Tonight, we salute the insufferable, those who have made it difficult to “get anything done”. It is interesting to note how well some “purist position(s)” hold up under the harsh light of historical understanding, especially as compared with those of “great compromisers”. I’ll start us off with Thoreau, who was far from alone in seeing slavery as an evil, but who was extremely rare in his understanding that he bore personal responsibility for even indistinct and diffuse association with what some were pleased to call “the peculiar institution”. The immediate cause of his refusing to pay his taxes was the associated issue of the Mexican-American War. In accordance with the quaint gentlemanly rules of warfare in those days, the winner of the war had to keep Texas (no offense, Austin). That meant they had to decide whether Texans could own slaves. Most national politicians framed this as a pragmatic question, one of expediency, involving above all which contingent in Congress would gain in power by having natural allies (votes) added to their cause. Sure, there was a little sanctimonious whining in the background, but... well, let’s return to that later.
In addition to moral issues, some purists whined at the time over the great expense and the high number of casualties which the Mexican-American War entailed. These naysayers were mostly dismissed as unrealistic, naive in the ways of territorial expansion, wars of aggression and such. But Thoreau would not be so easily ignored. He recorded his “selective outrage” in one of the famous poutrage rants of all time. One problem was that Thoreau didn’t support the president. In fact, one vote wasn’t even enough for him. He wanted more more more of getting his own way, at least when it came to ending slavery and immoral wars of aggression.
[Italics in original, bold added]
There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current [of slaves] along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man; but it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it.
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote. - Civil Disobedience
One can only imagine the discomfort of President Polk at having his fair and square election be treated so lightly, but let’s not allow issues of personality to distract us from the matter under discussion. To Thoreau, his vote was the smallest portion of his civic duty. In questions of conscience, his vote scarcely figured, and he did not think to look to politicians for guidance:
They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency. His [Senator Daniel Webster’s] words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject. I know of those whose serene and wise speculations on this theme would soon reveal the limits of his mind's range and hospitality. - Civil Disobedience
All fine and good, and easy enough for a survivalist in Taxachusetts to say. Here, Henry David, have a wonderful pony:
But real government requires compromise. Since the people of his day were, like our president today, sensible enough not to let the likes of Thoreau grind the workings of government to a screeching halt, let’s glance at one of the pragmatic compromises which fell out of the Mexican-American War, a compromise so wonderful that one of its architects was known as The Great Compromiser (thus lowering the “Great” bar sufficiently that even Reagan, The Great Communicator, managed to slip in under the wire). Perhaps this will shed some light on Thoreau’s view that “the world is not governed by policy and expediency”:
The fourth statute of the Compromise of 1850 . . . required federal judicial officials in all states and federal territories, including in those states and territories in which slavery was prohibited, to actively assist with the return of escaped slaves to their masters in the states and territories permitting slavery…. Law-enforcement officials everywhere in the United States had a duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a fugitive slave on no more evidence than a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. The suspected slave could not ask for a jury trial or testify on his or her own behalf. In addition, any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was to be subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine….
In addition to federal officials, the ordinary citizens of free states could be summoned into a posse and be required to assist in the capture and/or custody and/or transportation of the alleged escaped slave. This particular law was so rigorously pro-slavery as to prohibit the admission of the testimony of a person accused of being an escaped slave into evidence at the judicial hearing to determine the status of the accused escaped slave. Thus, if a freedman were claimed to be an escaped slave under the Fugitive Slave Law he or she could not resist his or her return to slavery by truthfully telling his or her own actual history. - Wikipedia: Compromise of 1850
Which brings us to another insufferably sanctimonious person, Harriett Beecher Stowe, but that will have to wait for another day.
Slavery did not end by a vote of congress, presidential decree, nor by an act of the Supreme Court. The Civil Rights Act was less the result of “more and better” congresspeople than of sustained, determined insistence in which the characters of those insisting were put at stake. Likewise the end of the Vietnam War. Union gains were bought at bloody personal cost. And so on.
I’ll end on this note from e e cummings, which reminds us painfully that, when placing one’s character on the line in opposition to the state, the stakes could not be higher.
In grateful tribute to Bradley Manning
i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or...
his wellbelov'd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but--though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"
straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)
but--though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"
our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died
Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too
preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.
- e.e. cummings, i sing of olaf glad and big