THE WISE MINORITY

by Leon Friedman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 17, 1970

Part I of Friedman's book consists of providing today's draft resisters with an illustrious pedigree dating back to the Whiskey Rebellion, the Alien and Sedition Acts and especially to the Abolitionists. The Berrigan brothers and Dr. Spock are spiritual cousins to Theodore Parker and Henry Beecher preaching on ""The Duty of Disobedience to Wicked Laws"" with Friedman here relying on the conventional appeal to Higher Law, conscience and God, against the enactments of legislatures. He is at pains to assure us that violation of specific laws will not open the floodgates to anarchy, adding that ""the more 'lawlessness' we see, the more repression we need to reestablish our internal equilibrium."" The book is not a plea for lenient treatment of the lawbreakers; quite the contrary, persecution is desirable as a means of arousing the conscience of the people. Having passed with a hop, skip and a jump through the history of civil disobedience in America, Friedman devotes Part II to the tribulations of The Resistance, with a brief homage to the shade of A. J. Muste and encouraging pats on the back for David Mitchell, Ray Mungo, David Harris and other young dissidents. Unfortunately the effort to vindicate ""the wise minority"" becomes theoretically murky when Friedman shifts his criteria for the ""legitimacy"" of law-breaking (a notion already suffering from semantic confusion) from an appeal to Higher Law to the general popular consensus that the deed is ""moral though misguided."" (Does the silent majority really view draft card burners as ""moral though misguided""?) The concluding claim that ""disobedience has played the most significant role in political and social change since the earliest days of the republic"" is too grandiose for this cursory survey. An Appendix provides statistics on draft resistance from World War I to the present.

Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dial

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION