There is, as Thoreau says, a time when honor claims intransigent civil disobedience, even though the punishment for such behavior is jail or the gallows. This thing called democracy perhaps sums up its value in having replaced declared tyrannies, or rather, in having the knowledge of the latter made “democrats” out of many men of valor. So we see that, in practice, tyranny has done nothing but change its name. It is impossible not to think of Kafka when we confront such democracy with the solitary individual. If we think, for example, of the immense oppressive power of the State machine or, more specifically, of the enlightened ones in robes, who enforce whatever they want, we see on the other side a nothing on his knees, tied up and under the double threat of the whip and the gag. Yet now, in a mix of Kafkaesque plot and nuances of Orwell and Huxley, oppression is delivered in packages as affable as they are false. To understand it and accept it willingly is to throw honor and the faculty of thought in the trash.
Honor Claims Civil Disobedience
