Lesson 2

HW Reading #1

“On Civil Disobedience”

Vocabulary:

Posse comitatus – (Latin) literally the power of the country; 
all men over the age of fifteen, who can be called upon by a sheriff to help
enforce the law.

      Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect 
for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents on injustice. A common 
and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of 
soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching 
in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their 
common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and 
produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable 
business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, 
what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service 
of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, 
such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man 
with its black arts--

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.