-
"I start from the supposition
that the world is topsy-turvy--"
-
"that things are all wrong,"
-
"that the wrong people are in jail--"
-
"and the wrong people are out of jail,"
-
"that the wrong people are in power--"
-
"and the wrong people are out of power,"
-
"that the wealth is distributed in this country
and the world in such a way--"
-
"as not simply to require small reform--"
-
"but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth."
-
"I start from the supposition that we don't have to
say too much about this because--"
-
"all we have to do is think
about the state of the world today--"
-
"and realize that things are all upside down."
-
"Now if you don't think,"
-
"if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things,"
-
"you actually begin to think that
things are not so bad,"
-
"or that just little things are wrong."
-
"But you have to get a little detached,"
-
"and then come back and look at the world,"
-
"and you are horrified."
-
"So we have to start from that supposition--"
-
"that things are really topsy-turvy."
-
"And our topic is topsy-turvy:
civil disobedience."
-
"Now, as soon as you say--"
-
"the topic is 'civil disobedience',"
-
"you are saying our problem is 'civil disobedience'."
-
"That is not our problem...."
-
"Our problem is civil obedience."
-
"Our problem is the numbers of people
all over the world--"
-
"who have obeyed the dictates
of the leaders of their government--"
-
"and have gone to war,"
-
"and millions have been killed
because of this obedience."
-
"We recognize this for Nazi Germany."
-
"We know that the problem there was obedience,"
-
"that the people obeyed Hitler."
-
"People obeyed; that was wrong."
-
"They should have challenged,
and they should have resisted;"
-
"and if we were only there,
we would have showed them."
-
"Even in Stalin's Russia we can understand that;"
-
"people are obedient,
all these herdlike people."
-
"Remember those bad old days when
people were exploited by feudalism?"
-
"Everything was terrible in the Middle Ages--"
-
"but now we have Western civilization,
the rule of law."
-
"The rule of law--"
-
"has regularized and maximized the injustice
that existed before the rule of law,"
-
"that is what the rule of law has done."
-
"When in all the nations of the world--"
-
"the rule of law is the darling of the leaders
and the plague of the people,"
-
"we ought to begin to recognize this."
-
"We have to transcend these
'national boundaries' in our thinking."
-
"Nixon and Brezhnev have much more in common with one another
than we have with Nixon."
-
"J. Edgar Hoover has far more in common with the
head of the Soviet secret police than he has with us."
-
"It's the international dedication to law and order
that binds the leaders of all countries in a comradely bond."
-
"That's why we are always surprised
when they get together--"
-
"they smile, they shake hands,
they smoke cigars,"
-
"they really like one another
no matter what they say."
-
"What we are trying to do, I assume,"
-
"is really to get back to the principles and aims--"
-
"and spirit of the Declaration of Independence."
-
"This spirit is resistance to illegitimate authority--"
-
"and to forces that deprive people of their life and liberty
and right to pursue happiness,"
-
"and therefore under these conditions,"
-
"it urges the right to alter or abolish
their current form of government--"
-
"and the stress had been on 'abolish'."
-
"But to establish the principles of
the Declaration of Independence,"
-
"wefre gonna need to go outside the law,"
-
"to stop obeying the laws that demand killing--"
-
"or that allocate wealth the way it's been done,"
-
"or that put people in jail
for petty technical offenses--"
-
"and keep other people out of jail
for enormous crimes."
-
"My hope--"
-
"is that this kind of spirit will take place
not just in this country--"
-
" but in other countries
because they all need it."
-
"People in all countries need the spirit
of disobedience to the state,"
-
"which is not a metaphysical thing--"
-
"but a thing of force and wealth."
-
"And we need a kind of
'declaration of interdependence'--"
-
"among people in all countries of the world--"
-
"who are striving for the same thing."