Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology
Page 24
find a legal basis for civil disobedience, as if the morality of the disobedient act is not enough. Granted, the Constitution has enough open-ended rights (the Ninth Amendment,
for instance, has endless possibilities for asserting the rights of people) to cover just about
anything. But to seek refuge in that gives too much support to the idea that you must have
a legal cover for your moral act. Dworkin's undue respect for the law shows itself when he
says (near the end of his chapter on civil disobedience): "If acts of dissent continue to occur after the Supreme Court has ruled that the laws are valid, or that the political question
doctrine applies, then acquittal on the grounds I have described [an 'uncertain' law] is no
longer appropriate." In other words, Dworkin is wil ing to accept punishment—he suggests
"minimal or suspended sentences"—for insistent civil disobedience. Dworkin finds himself in the humble position of appealing for leniency to the authorities—to Congress, to the
prosecutor, to the judge—because he is constantly addressing, not the citizenry, but the
government (the prince).
18 Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," reprinted in a col ection edited by Staughton Lynd, Nonviolence in America (Bobbs-Merril , 1966).
19 Pamphlet distributed by the Catonsvil e Nine Defense Committee in 1968.
20 Produced by Lee Lockwood, West Newton, Mass. 1970.
21 John Rawls, in his book A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971), has a
section on civil disobedience (pp. 333-391) in which he worries about civil disobedience
going so far as to bring about a general disrespect for law, but he does speak strongly about
the obligation to resist under certain circumstances. Rawls, however, confines his discussion
to the situation in a "nearly just constitutional regime" by which he seems to mean the
United States. This exaggerates the justness in our system and, therefore, creates a basis
for a more cautious and partial acceptance of civil disobedience. There is an excel ent
comparison of the views on civil disobedience of Rawls, Dworkin, and myself, in an
unpublished paper by Roger Karapin (as part of his National Science Foundation Graduate
Fel owship), titled, "The State, Democracy, and the Disobedient Citizen: A Review of Some
Recent North American Contributions."
22 Liberals and conservatives often join on this issue. For instance, Irving Kristol, a leading
American conservative, wrote during the Vietnam war, "Even were I opposed to the
Administration's policy in Vietnam, which I am not, I would not regard this case as one in
which civil disobedience is justified. The opportunities for dissent are obviously abundant."
What Kristol misses is that citizens may have the opportunity to speak up, but speaking
alone may not be effective enough, powerful enough, to get a nation out of a war. Nets York
Times Magazine, Nov. 26, 1967. Reprinted in Hugo Bedau, ed., Civil Disobedience (Pegasus, 1969).
23 James Birney.
24 Samuel May. See Martin Duberman, ed. The Anti-Slavery Vanguard (Princeton University
Press, 1965).
25 Abe Fortas, Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience (Signet, 1968).
26 Quoted by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Popular Library, 1974).
117
27 The nineteenth-century English philosopher T. H. Green, in his 1879 lectures on the
Principles of Political Obligation (University of Michigan Press, 1967), recognizes the right of civil disobedience, especial y in war. He says, "If most wars had been wars for the
maintenance or acquisition of political freedom" then disobedience might not be justified.
But, in fact, "in most modem wars the issue has not been of this kind at al . The wars have
arisen primarily out of the rival ambition of kings and dynasties for territorial
aggrandisement."
28 U.S. v. Curtiss-Wrigbt Export Corp. 299 U.S. 304.
29 Jerome Barron and C. Thomas Dienes, Constitutional Law (West Publishing, 1986),
comment on the Curtiss-Wright case: "While this declaration of inherent foreign affairs powers, operating independently of the Constitution, represents a questionable interpretation of history, it has never been rejected by the Court, and has, on occasion, been
embraced."
30 Da Costa v. Melvin R. Laird, 405 U.S. 979 (1972).
31 Joint Meeting of the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Armed Services Committee
of the U.S. Senate, Sept. 17, 1962.
32 Boston Globe, May 15, 1975.
33 Studies of the effects of civil disobedience on the psyches of those engaged in it do not
show that breaking the law for a social purpose wil lead to breaking the law for other
purposes. A study of 300 young black people who engaged in civil disobedience found
"virtual y no manifestations of delinquency or anti-social behavior, no school drop-outs, and
no known il egitimate pregnancies." Pierce and West, "Six Years of Sit-ins: Psychodynamics, Cause and Effects," International Journal of Social Psychiatry (Winter 1966). The authors conclude, "In any event, the evidence is insufficient to demonstrate that acts of civil
disobedience of the more limited kind inevitably lead to an increased disrespect for law or
propensity toward crime."
34 There is an eighteen-page summary of the antiwar movement in Howard Zinn, A People's
History of the United States (Harper & Row, 1971). The quote from the leaflet is in my files, Wisconsin Historical Society. Also see Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sul ivan, Who Spoke Up?
(Doubleday, 1984).
35 For the background of this speech, see David Garrow, Bearing the Cross (Wil iam Morrow,
1986), 552-553.
36 The facts about conscription during the Vietnam War come from Lawrence Baskir and
Wil iam Strauss, Chance and Circumstance (Random House, 1978).
37 Philip Supina's letter is in my files.
38 The details on draft evaders, deserters, exiles, less-than-honorable discharges, etc. can
be found in Baskir and Strauss, Chance and Circumstance. They report 500,000 "desertion incidents," which is probably a multiple of the number of permanent desertions.
39 Boston Globe, Apr. 3, 1972.
40 New York Times, June 3, 1973.
41 New York Times, 1980.
42 Elinor Langer, "The Oakland Seven," The Atlantic (Oct. 1969).
118
43 There are more details on this trial in Howard Zinn, "The Camden Trial," Liberation (June 1973).
44 Much of the material on jury nul ification comes from an article by Professor Alan W.
Scheflin of the Georgetown University Law Center, "Jury Nul ification: The Right to Say No,"
Southern California Law Review 45 (no. 1).
45 Quoted in Sidney Hook, The Paradoxes of Freedom, from The Life and Writings of B. R.
Curtis (Little Brown, 1879).
46 Quoted by Scheflin, "Jury Nul ification."
47 Roscoe Pound, "Law in Books and Law in Action," American Law Review (1910), quoted by Scheflin, "Jury Nul ification."
48 Jessica Mitford, The Trial of Dr. Spock (Vintage, 1969).
49 Boston Globe, Sept. 8, 1968.
50 The Catonsvil e Nine case was official y U.S. v. Moylan (1969). Quoted by Scheflin, "Jury Nul ification."
51 New York Times, Apr. 16, 1987.
52 Film, The Holy Outlaw, produced by Lee Lockwood for NET Journal, public television, 1970.
53 The Pentagon Papers (Gravel Edition, Beacon Press, 1971), 564.
54 Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978).
55 Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of M
an (Little, Brown, 1951).
119
Seven
Economic Justice: The American Class System
In the summer of 1989, on the twentieth anniversary of the first human landing on the
moon, I listened to a television discussion on space exploration. I heard a black woman
poet, Maya Angelou, struggle, politely but with obvious frustration, against three famous
male writers who spoke enthusiastical y about spending more bil ions to send men to the
moon and to Mars.
Against them, she seemed to be climbing the steepest mountain. She kept saying, Yes, I
am excited, too, about exploring space, but where wil we get money to help the poor
people, black and white and Asian, here at home? The three men were perplexed by her
stubborn refusal to join al the self-congratulation about the conquest of space.
In the summer of 1969 as preparations were made for landing men on the moon, a New
York Times reporter wrote from Florida:
Within the shadow of the John F. Kennedy Space Center, the hungry people
sit and watch … .
They sit and watch the early morning crush of cars fil ed with engineers and
technicians move toward 'the Cape,' 18 miles north, in the feverish days
before the moon launching on Wednesday morning.
"The irony is so apparent here," said Dr. Henry Jerkins, the county's only
Negro doctor. "We're spending al this money to go to the moon and here,
right here in Brevard, I treat malnourished children with prominent ribs and
pot bel ies.”1
In 1987 a ful -page advertisement for Tiffany's, the famous jewelry store, appeared in the
New York Times, with a photo of "the definitive sports watch in eighteen karat gold. Men's, $9,800. Women's, $7,800." Several months before, the Times carried a story, datelined
East Hartford, Connecticut, with the fol owing lead paragraph: "A 28-year-old man,
described as despondent after a long period of unemployment, shot and kil ed his three
young children today, then committed suicide with the same pistol."2
The unemployed man from East Hartford was not an oddity. In the year 1987 (according to
a report of the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives) one-fifth of
the population in the United States—more than 50 mil ion people—lived in families whose
annual income averaged $5,000 a year.
The success and failure of the United States of America lies in those stories. Staggering
technological advance alongside poverty and hunger. A class of extremely rich people;
another class of quite prosperous people (but nervous about the security of their situation);
another class of men, women, and children living in desperation and misery within sight of
colossal wealth. Who could be surprised that crime, violence, and drug addiction would
accompany such contrasts? Or that psychic disorder, broken families, and alcoholism would
accompany such insecurity?
We have a class system, unmistakably, in a country that promises "liberty and justice for
al ." Where is the justice of a society that has such extremes of luxury for some, misery for others? Or does the middle-class comfort with which most of us live in the United States
prevent us from asking that question with genuine indignation?
121
Part of me holds on to the class anger that grew in me as a teenager when, watching the belongings of hardworking people put out on the street because they could not pay their
rent, their eviction overseen by club-carrying policemen, I became conscious that something
was terribly wrong.
My father had a fourth-grade education, my mother got as far as the seventh grade. They
both worked very hard, but we lived in dirty buildings, roach-infested cold rooms, with no
refrigerator, no shower, no phone. I would come back from school in the winter's early dusk
and find the house dark, no electricity, and the gas oven not working because the bil s had
not been paid. I did not believe it was the work of God, and after some thought I concluded
that it was not an accident; it was systematic, recurring, manmade, and approved by the
law.
The anger melts repeatedly as I enjoy the good things that this rich country supplies to two-
thirds of its population, but the anger returns when I read that the U.S. Defense
Department proposes to spend $70 bil ion for stil another war plane (a moral monster,
cal ed the Stealth Bomber) while the government cuts subsidies for public housing and 2
mil ion Americans, including hundreds of thousands of children, have no place to live.
During the Reagan administration of the 1980s, the country's rich became richer and the
poor, poorer. Reagan's attorney-general, Edwin Meese, said cheerful y he was not aware of
people being hungry. Around the time he was saying this a Physicians Task Force reported
that 15 mil ion American families had an income of under $10,000 a year, received no food
stamps, and were chronical y unable to get adequate food.3 A report by the Harvard School
of Public Health in 1984 said that its researchers found that over 30,000 people had to beg
for food to avoid starvation.
Since the end of World War II there has been a fanatic, almost insane wil ingness to spend
bil ions on weapons, while mil ions of American families lack the basic necessities of life. The
fol owing story appeared in the New York Times in the summer of 1984:
An investigation of the Navy's newest and most technical y advanced cruiser
by the staff of the House Appropriations Committee has found the ship
overweight, sluggish, and in possible danger of capsizing… . The
Ticonderoga … cost (1 bil ion … . The Reagan Administration plans to order
between 18 and 24 of the ships in coming years.4
A few months before that report, a United Press International dispatch appeared in the
press:
The Reagan Administration's budget includes welfare cuts for pregnant
women and those who get aid under the program for the aged, the blind and
the disabled, government officials said today … . The change could save (1.5
mil ion to (3.5 mil ion.5
In early 1990, as dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe made a
"Soviet threat" extremely unlikely, President George Bush, in a speech to a local chamber of commerce, "warned that he would not support new domestic programs paid for with money
taken from the military budget."6
122
When we read about people standing in long lines in Moscow hoping to buy food, the old arguments about socialism and capitalism don't seem useful any more. As we near the end
of the twentieth century, it seems clear that neither the Soviet system nor the American
system has been able to meet the fundamental needs of the entire population—to food,
house, educate, and provide medical care. Perhaps we need to put aside that theoretical
argument (an argument between two frozen bodies of thought, neither one fitting the
complicated human situation of today's world) and just try to answer a few important
questions.
What is economic justice? What are the proper goals of a good economic system? What is
the reality of wealth, poverty, and class distinction in this country? And how do we get from
this reality to something close to justice?
Rugged Individualism and Self-Help
Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold the
se truths to be
self-evident, that al men are created equal." (Or as amended by women who gathered in
1848 in Seneca Fal s, New York, at a women's rights convention: "that al men and women
are created equal." Or as a possible children's convention might say: "that al children are created equal.")
A common reaction to Jefferson's phrase "created equal" is that it is just not so; people are endowed with different physical and mental capacities, and with different talents, drives,
and energies. But this is a misreading of the Declaration of Independence. There is no
period after the word "equal," but a comma, and the sentence goes on: "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." In other words, people are equal not in their natural
abilities but in their rights.
Jefferson said this was "self-evident," and I would think that most people would agree. But some selves do not think it evident at al . We know that Jefferson and the Founding Fathers, almost al of whom were very wealthy, did not real y mean for that equality to be
established, certainly not between slave and master, not between rich and poor. And when,
eleven years after they adopted the Declaration, they wrote a constitution, it was designed
to keep the distribution of wealth pretty much as it existed at the time—which was very
unequal. But that is no reason for anyone to surrender those rights, any more than the
ignoring of the racial equality demanded by the Fourteenth Amendment was reason for
discarding that goal.
To say that people have an equal right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, means that
if, in fact, there is inequality in those things, society has a responsibility to correct the
situation and to ensure that equality.
Not everyone thinks so. One man whose thinking was close to that of the Reagan
administration in the eighties (Charles Murray, Losing Ground) wrote enthusiastical y about doing away with government aid to the poor: "It would leave the working-aged person with
no recourse whatsoever except the job market, family members, friends, and public or
private local y funded services."
It is a restatement of laissez-faire—let things take their natural course without government