A/N: I really like Thoreau.  He’s an interesting character—self-contradictions and all.

                                    Thoreau’s Ideal Government—Is It Truly Ideal?           

            Living in a time of legislated slavery, a president’s pet war, and uncomfortable sectional tensions in the United States, Henry David Thoreau had ample opportunity to observe his government’s faults.  “That government is best,” he writes in his essay Civil Disobedience, “which governs not at all.”  Governments were an undue burden to the individual, a moral tyrant that usurped the natural rights of the human being.  Yet in taking this view, does the absence of government guarantee any better situation?  There are dangers in tyrannical unlimited liberty as well as tyrannically enforced loss of liberty—the trick is to decide which is more odious.  The decision is being made around the world at this very moment and has been being made since the concept of power first crossed some primitive hominid’s mind. 

            Any question concerning methods of government is ultimately a question about power—and who can responsibly wield that power over the greater population.  Governments are created for the purpose of answering such a question, as governments are, essentially, a system for the apportionment of the power of choice.  In an autocracy, the power and responsibility of decision making is delegated to a single ruler who dictates to the rest of the nation what is right and wrong, what is just cause for war, and in some cases what art or literature may be created.  Governments based on aristocracy burden a relatively small group or class with this duty.  And, as Thoreau noted, even democracies and republics involve the assuming of powers of decision making over a population—or, more precisely, the assuming of power by most of the society over all of society.  Thoreau’s quote is a rejection of these usual governmental systems of power apportionment as both morally wrong and dangerous.  The job of decision making rests, naturally and ideally if Thoreau is to be believed, with the individual.  Why else, he asks, is each man born with his own conscience?

            Along these same lines, Thoreau’s concept of the American government about which he writes is that of a selected group making decisions for the individual.  Each law, each bill passed or vetoed represents the will of the lawmakers, but because it is enforced as law, it is made to be the decision—willing or no—of the people at large.  Simply by supporting the government of the country, citizens uphold all of its rulings.  The problem with this system is that letting lawmakers in the legislatures set laws for the country essentially gives them the right to decide morality—legality in technical terms, but in any event a set of regulations that everyone must live by and that there are punishments for disobeying.  Morality, however, is a highly personal thing, one which a person cultivates over many years of experience and meditation, and not one which should simply be shoved in his face by another.  Any government that governs at all incorporates this system of one or several individuals forcing morality on and intruding into the personal life of another.  This is the problem Thoreau has with governments and why his ideal government is one which governs “not at all”: in such a society individuals alone would exercise power over themselves and be rulers of their moira.

            In addition to moral problems, there are practical dangers to any governmental system.  When any group is given some responsibility over its fellows, it has the chance of seizing more and becoming tyrannical.  An excellent concrete example is the suspension of free speech and habeas corpus laws during wartime in the United States—the duly elected government has, or has found, the power to repeal laws contrary to the will of many of the governed.  The problem with power is that, as the old saw runs, it is corrupting.  In the mouths of many people, power’s taste causes a strong hunger for more and more influence over others—ultimately sovereign individuals—at any cost.  By no means is this the case with all those in government offices, but if the possibility exists, it is quite likely that it will one day be exploited.  Thoreau, looking at the political climate of his time—legal slavery, a dubious war with Mexico—found little reason to trust his politicians with the power to dictate standards to the individuals of America.

            Thoreau’s ideal is that individuals be the masters of their own lives—yet, can a large group of people be reasonably expected to, in the absence of governing oversight and laws, look after only themselves and not endanger others?  Though Thoreau’s answer to the question would be an emphatic “yes” (judging by his transcendentalist roots), the world, sadly, is not Thoreau’s ideal place.  It is a truth that just as there are people who would happily leave others be and look after their own affairs, there are those who would take advantage of such a state of non-government to trample on others without fear of retribution.  If there are no agreed-upon standards for behavior, and no way of enforcing those standards (in other words, laws and a government), then the position of society is just as perilous as if it were under a dictator.  The individual rights that such anarchy would seem to promote are actually more likely to be taken away by another, as without an existing government, an ambitious conqueror is free to take over the nation and set himself up as dictator.

            The moral condition of such a society is perilous as well—though in name free to pursue a personal morality, the individual has nothing to save him from having another person’s morality forced upon him.  In the absence of government, he can also throw his standards at others militantly—if there is no protection against it, it is merely a matter of time before such a happening occurs.  So the noble purpose of allowing individual people to decide on morality and conscience for themselves is actually endangered by giving them this limitless power—in yet another manifestation of the proverb, power corrupts individuals.  Government is needed since society as a whole can not be trusted as its own governance. 

            What conclusion can be drawn from these arguments?  The whole question of how best to protect individuals’ liberties is a frustrating—and dangerous—catch-22: government breeds tyrants; unlimited liberty breeds tyrants.  Much of the history of humankind can be seen as a struggle to learn which of these is the lesser evil—and if it be government, government of what type?  Thoreau would answer unlimited liberty.  Jefferson would say democracy, Hobbes monarchy, Lenin communism. 

            In the end, the whole debate over government boils down to the question of whom to trust: individuals to govern themselves, or individuals to govern other individuals?  The dangers—and benefits—can be nearly the same in both cases.