John Singleton with Bob HowardRip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 36-38, under the heading “Civil Disobedience”.

We are the slaves of custom, and we have begun to hug our chains.
HAROLD LASKI

In the American Declaration of Independence, it states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall serve most likely to effect their safety and happiness, Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security … (Our italics.)

Obviously, things haven’t changed much in 200 years.

One of the more common errors people make today is to confuse morality with legality. Ideally, of course, what is legal should be moral, and vice versa. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Our statute books are full of immoral laws, and, whether intended or not, they do “evince a design to reduce (us) under absolute Despotism”. Choosing between morality and legality in such cases, is to choose between obeying one’s conscience and obeying the law.

Henry David Thoreau, in his famous essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience said a long time ago:

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right … Law never made men a whit more just, and, by means of their respect of it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice.

Moral people take responsibility for their own actions. They do not hide behind the facade of legality, or the State. A common excuse trotted out by people accused of war crimes was/is to plead that they were only following orders. In a magnificent essay called The Dangers of Obedience, Harold Laski writes:

… for freedom means self expression, and the secret of freedom is courage. No man ever remains free who acquiesces in what he knows to be wrong. His business as a citizen is to act upon the instructed judgement of his conscience. He may be mistaken, but he ought ceaselessly to be aware that the act he opposes is, after all, no more than the opinion of men who, like himself, are also fallible.1

Laski again:

… the plea for inertia is always a powerful one. It enables us to plow our little furrow without an impending sense of contingent disaster. It saves us from the grim need to revise habits it is always dangerous to examine and, sometimes, fatal to destroy. Yet it can be said with certainty that the price of inertia is always, in the long run, the loss of civic sense in the multitude. Men who insist that some particular injustice is not their responsibility, sooner or later become unable to resent any injustice. Tyranny depends upon nothing so much as the lethargy of the people.2

This does not mean that we believe that everybody has carte blanche to do whatever they like. The bloody minded, destructive lunatic fringes might claim to be following their consciences, but it will do them little good, for there is another factor to be considered. They have to be prepared to take responsibility for their actions. There is a distinct difference between the type of civil disobedience that Thoreau and Laski recommend and sheer wanton destructiveness. If we are to take our responsibility for our lives and actions seriously, then, our loyalty to our society should not be passive and complacent but active and critical.

We hear all the time about the great Australian apathy. We Australians suffer from a great lack of spirit. Too many of us are afraid of losing what little we have managed to accumulate; and those among us who have meekly submitted are affronted by those who don’t and so tend to despise them. Boat-rockers are seldom popular. But if no one has the courage or the conscience to rock the boat, then we will continue on our present road into a meekly accepted servitude, made all the more ignominious by the fact that our rulers will be no more than a bunch of pretentious mediocrities.

Laski for the last time:

All over the world little groups of active-minded men run to the State to urge that some particular convention be made binding upon us all, or to prohibit some particular experiment which, a generation from now, may well become a normal habit of everyday life. And the world runs to meet its chains because the citizen is too afraid to venture out of the little private corner in which he is buried. He does not seem to know that the power to insist upon his freedom lies in his own hands. His is powerless because he is unconscious of his own power.3

Footnotes
  1. Harold Laski, The Dangers of Obedience, Johnson Reprint Corp., New York and London, 1968, p. 7.
  2. Ibid, pp. 19-20.
  3. Ibid, pp. 10-11.