Let’s Hear It for Arrogance

I didn’t realize this, but “arrogance” is a synonym for “having a conscience.” No, really. I learned this today from Jammie Wearing Fool.

You may have read about L.F. Eason III, who retired from his job of 29 years at the North Carolina Department of Agriculture rather than obey a government directive. The directive was to fly U.S. and state flags at half mast in honor of the late pox upon humanity known as Jesse Helms. Well, Jammie Wearing Fool had this to say about that.

Such sanctimonious arrogance. Just because he’s a liberal twit with his own opinions, in his mind he gets to decide which state directives to follow.

Oh, my dear ones, read that sentence over and over again, and reflect upon it, because it is the true voice of American conservatism. How dare any of us listen to our own wisdom and act according to our own consciences? We are called upon to muffle our inner voices and do what we’re told. This is the American Way.

However, what Eason did is called “civil disobedience,” and it’s a time-honored American tradition going back to, oh, the Boston Tea Party at least.

Civil disobedience is the willful violation of a law or government directive because that law or directive is unjust. (It is not, as some assume, an act of malicious vandalism to demonstrate one’s unhappiness with government.) Rosa Parks’s refusal to obey a segregation law and sit at the back of a bus was classic civil disobedience. According to Jammie Wearing Fool, Rosa Parks was just being arrogant.

Another time-honored convention of civil disobedience is that if your violation of the law requires punishment, that you accept the punishment and not resist arrest. Henry David Thoreau refused to pay poll taxes because of his opposition to slavery and the Mexican-American War. He spent a night in prison. He was prepared to remain in prison, but an aunt paid his poll taxes over his protests, and he was released. He later said “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

Mr. Eason wasn’t imprisoned, but he gave up a job, which is a terrible penalty these days when good jobs are hard to come by. I wish him well.

And just because these leftists say such things about Mr. Helms does not make them true.

A valid point, but just because Jammie Wearing Fool doesn’t want to believe them, doesn’t make them false, either.

Sure enough, this haughty Eason is a John Edwards supporter.

Clearly, he needs to be sent to the Rush Limbaugh Re-education Camp, so that he can be relieved of his own opinions and think only state-sanctioned thoughts.

Who knows, before long Silky will sue on his behalf for wrongful termination. You can be sure this Eason will be put on the leftist pedestal of worship for his courage. Heck, they’ll probably have him speak at the convention in Denver.

It did take courage, since it cost him his job, and I salute the man. It shows us there are still people with integrity in the world who don’t take the easy road with the rest of the crowd. If only there were more like him.

A couple of days ago I interviewed Zen teacher Norman Fischer, former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. And one of the items that came up in our conversation is the extent to which we are socialized into forgetting our own life experiences in favor of an “official” narrative sanctioned by society. We shuffle through life with this sanctioned narrative in our heads about who we are supposed to be and what our lives are supposed to be like, but that narrative may have nothing to do with who we are and what are lives really are or could be. Some people eventually wake up to this, and get real, but others never do.

So Jammie Wearing Fool sees someone who’s awake to who he is and who acts on his conscience, and this looks like “arrogance” to the Fool because it’s overriding the Official Sanctioned Narrative that we’re all supposed to follow and not ask questions about.

Of course, at the other end of the political scale we have the “pro-life” pharmacists who won’t fill birth control prescriptions. It seems to me this is also civil disobedience, since pharmacists are licensed by their states to fill prescriptions. If filling birth control prescriptions violates a pharmacist’s conscience I respect that, but the penalty should be loss of his license and a new career path. Instead, such pharmacists want to keep their jobs and play God with other peoples’ lives. I wonder if the Fool finds that arrogant, too?

15 thoughts on “Let’s Hear It for Arrogance

  1. There’s a difference, as you realize between Eason who disobeyed AND resigned, and the ‘pharmacist’ who merely refuses to fill a prescription.

    True civil disobedience demands a sacrifice on the part of the individual participating – otherwise he’s merely being disobedient.

    I’ve wondered why Americans have become so sheep-like, so seemingly unable to go beyond their written rants and take to the streets. I’ve read that we’ve institutionalized stupidity and as a result we are living in fatuous times. That may be an answer but I think there’s something far more over-reaching, deceptive and finally insidious at work.

  2. I’ll bet this is one of the same right wingers who says we can’t have any restrictions on gun ownershipe because the people need to be able to resist the government with private weaponry. Unless, of course, it would mean violating a “state directive.”

  3. True civil disobedience demands a sacrifice on the part of the individual participating – otherwise he’s merely being disobedient.

    Felicity nails it. Mr. Eason resigned; he was not fired. He was not a robot, jammie-wearing or otherwise. And, unlike his hapless critic, he was not a fool.

    Helms had no one to blame but himself for his own moral bankruptcy, and the Helms-loving fool likewise has nobody else to blame for his complete ignorance of historical facts.

  4. Reminds me of Mohamed Ali.. Now there was a man who exhibited the courage of his convictions, and paid the price in doing so. At the time his disobedience was not viewed favorably by anybody, but he was morally vindicated in history. Conscience, courage, and humility…not arrogance

  5. A lot of people don’t know how dangerous Helms was. He attached a provision ot an appropriations bill that would have denied the tax-exempt status to any cult. Guess who would define what a cult was? The IRS opposed the provision so it wasn’t about taxes. IMO, had it passed (and it did not) the idea was to lay the groundwork to persecute minority religions; first deny the tax-exempt satus – then deny they represent a ‘religion’ then pass laws to ban that kind of worship. He was a sneaky & hateful person & if his faith is correct, hell is a bit more crowded now.

  6. Maha, this is the kind of analysis I only find here at the mahablog, nice job.

    Virginia: “Unless, of course. It would mean violating a state directive”

    Exactly too funny!

    The thing is these wingnuts can’t come to the realization that soon they will stop trusting the “state” once again (Big government liberals with all the new unitary executive powers). Just like they always do (every 20 years or so), once a liberal or even moderate governmental tone starts to take hold they will get all “question authority” on the public at large. But for now it is “Liberal twit with his own opinions”. They just don’t get that us liberal twits always question authority that is what makes us liberal. Some of us may be twits but it has nothing to do with politics.

    I suspect Mr. fool has just lost 20 percent or so of whatever assets he has and is just plain angry. Unfortunately for Mr. Fool its only going to get worse, but fear not soon the “liberal twits” will be in charge and then Mr. Fool will have someone to blame besides himself.

  7. I heard Eason on a National Propaganda Radio interview. He specifically said he was NOT courageous!

    Eason said that from is perspective what he did was fairly safe, meaning that while he knew there would be repercussions, he was ready to live on his retirement at this point in his life. He’d been with the lab for 21 years.

    He said that it was more risky when the state ordered the flags lowered for Nixon’s death several years ago (when his retirement package was smaller). He had discussed with his wife that he wouldn’t follow that directive either, again telling his department to either fly the flags at full, or not fly them at all that day.

    Well he lucked out and it rained for the two days that the state had ordered the flags to be lowered for Nixon, so no flags were flown at all.

  8. Swami sez: “…at the time his ( Ali’s) disobedience was not viewed favorably by anybody”

    I beg to differ most strenuously…Not only did a great many people view his action quite favorably…Many of them were wearing the nation’s uniform at the time…

    Ali had the courage of his convictions and took the heat for his deeply held beliefs…

    (And did you know…The draft board of Ali’s home state of Kentucky granted his request for exemption from induction…But in the only such instance ever, Selective Service in D.C. overuled the state and ordered them to induct him…As the late, great C. Stengel used to say: “You could look it up”)

  9. I heard Eason on a National Propaganda Radio interview. He specifically said he was NOT courageous!

    Genuinely courageous people always say that.

  10. Mostly I’m with Mr. Eason here, any gesture of respect or honor rendered to Helms would sicken me. As a former military person, however, I have a deeply held belief that “you salute the officer not the man.” In this case is it not that the flag is dipped for the death of a Senator and as such is appropriate regardless of how disgusting that man may have been?

    Civil disobedience is not the issue here. Refusal to obey an unjust law means you disagree with the law itself, not merely a single application of it. Mr. Eason surely dipped the flag at other times during his 31 years.

  11. [Eason] said that it was more risky when the state ordered the flags lowered for Nixon’s death several years ago (when his retirement package was smaller). He had discussed with his wife that he wouldn’t follow that directive either, again telling his department to either fly the flags at full, or not fly them at all that day.

    Interesting. I remember my sister-in-law, who’s somewhat to my right politically, seeing a lowered flag for Nixon and quipping, “So is the mourning period 30 days for dead criminals, too?”

    As for Helms, it just stuns me that anyone, anywhere, would defend a man who once bragged about singing “Dixie” on an elevator with Carol Mosely Braun, in hopes of making her cry. Not a shred of decency in the man.

  12. Clarification: I should have said “while on an elevator with Carol Mosely Braun.” It for damn sure wasn’t a duet.

  13. If filling birth control prescriptions violates a pharmacist’s conscience I respect that, but the penalty should be loss of his license and a new career path.

    Or, to use another recent example, the County Clerks in California who have ‘moral’ objections to the court’s marriage equality ruling should resign their posts in protest, instead of trying to subvert the ruling while maintaining their positions (as the Butte and Kern County Clerks have done).

  14. this jammie guy is a satire right? I looked at what he writes and I doubt anyone with an IQ greater than a rutabaga’s could take anything he writes seriously……

  15. Civil disobedience … going back to the Boston Tea Party at least

    Minor nitpicking: the Boston Tea Party had nothing at all to do with Civil Disobedience other than when it was mythologised. The Boston Tea Party was a response to the lowering of import taxes by the British Government. The reason that caused some Bostonites to riot was that this lowering of taxes would prevent the smugglers from undercutting the East India Company and so put them out of business.

    Therefore a band of smugglers put on disguises and boarded the ships of the East India Company and threw all the tea they posessed into the harbout and deliberately drowned it in order to prevent it being sold. Yes, it was a riot caused by change in tax policy, and yes those who did it were in disguise. But that’s about the only connection it has to the mythological version. (Or does every time someone deliberately destroys his competitors stock, while wearing a disguise to stop himself being recognised count as civil disobedience?)

    On the other hand this was done openly and against the individual interests of the protestor. While being prepared to face the consequences. It’s a nice example of civil disobedience.

Comments are closed.