VIDEO: When Government Becomes the Enemy — Resistance Against State Injustice

The right to self-defense is perhaps the least disputed of all moral principles. It is also common sense that we have the right to defend other people who are aggressed upon. Virtually everyone recognizes these rights as the most obvious of ethical principles, yet many people believe that our rights to defense do not apply if the aggressor to our person or property is an agent of the state. In this video relying on Jason Brennan’s book When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice, we explore why this belief is wrong.

“The standard view, which almost every one of every ideology seems to accept, is that government agents are surrounded by a kind of magic moral force field. They enjoy a special privilege status when they commit unjust actions. The standard view holds both that government agents have a special permission to perform unjust actions – actions that we would judge evil and impermissible were a nongovernment agent to perform them – and that these agents enjoy a special right against being stopped when they commit injustice.”

Jason Brennan, When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice

In the West, the principles that determine the ethical use of self-defense, or the defense of others, were not created by an emperor, king, or government, but are a product of English common law. The English common law system developed after the Norman Conquest of 1066 AD and is a bottom-up form of lawmaking. Judges decide cases based on societal customs and legal precedents and then these decisions become the precedents that are taken into consideration to resolve future disputes. Or as Brennan explains:

“Judges had to decide cases with a mind to what is fair and just as well as to find solutions to problems that would solve problems and enable disputing parties to stop fighting and get on with their lives. When judges made good and useful decisions, other judges would copy them. The use of juries and competition between alternative courts also ensured widespread and smart input from the masses. Accordingly the common law represents the wisdom of the masses.”

Jason Brennan, When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice

The common law system spread from England to its colonies such as the United States, Canada, Australia and India, and integral to common law are the rights to self-defense, and the defense of others. The common law principles that define these rights reflect, in the words of the political philosopher John Hasnas, “what fifty generations of juries and judges believed to be a fair and proper response to attack.” (John Hasnas, Lobbying and Self-Defense)

Common law recognizes that individuals have the right to protect themselves, and others, with the use of force, against threats of violence, such as assault, battery, rape, or murder. It also allows reasonable force to prevent theft or trespass onto one’s property. Common law also recognizes that when acting in self-defense, deadly force is justified so long as certain conditions are met. Firstly, the killer must not be the aggressor. Secondly, the killer must believe that he, or someone else, is in imminent danger of severe bodily harm. Thirdly, the killer must reasonably believe that killing is necessary to avoid the threat. This final condition is called the doctrine of necessity and it states that if an alternative non-lethal means is just as effective at stopping the threat, it should be used rather than deadly force.

It is important to emphasize that for self-defense, or the defense of others, to be justified under the principles of common law the threat must be imminent. Or as Brennan explains:

“You engage in self-defense against the bully when you fight back as he pushes you. You defend someone else against the would-be mugger when you stop him as he tries to rob his victim. If, on the other hand, you beat up the bully or mugger a year later when they’re harming no one, you aren’t defending yourself or anyone else. You are exacting revenge or inflicting private punishment.”

Jason Brennan, When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice

Government agents commit all sorts of injustices that meet the common law threshold for a defensive reaction by the victim. For example, governments steal a large portion of our money every year, they kidnap and imprison people for using drugs they don’t approve of, they murder people en masse in unjustified wars, and agents of the state, such as police officers, sometimes abuse and even kill citizens who don’t comply to their commands – even if their commands are in support of unjust laws. If a private citizen did any of these things no one would dispute that the victim of the aggression could defend themselves with force, and in some cases deadly force. For example, imagine if your neighbour believed that drinking alcohol was a threat to society and decided to break into your home, kidnap you, subject you to a trial under his direction, and then imprison you in his basement for years if you were found guilty. No one would deny that you could use force to prevent yourself from being the victim of this grave injustice.

But when agents of the state commit similar injustices, we are told that we cannot defend ourselves and that the acceptable forms of response are limited to peaceful protest, moving to another country, expressing our discontent at the voting booth, or hoping that the internal workings of the state will punish the government agents who abuse their power.

This belief that agents of the state possess a special moral status, and that when they commit an injustice the victim cannot defend himself, is known as the special immunity thesis, and as Brennan writes:

“The prevailing view is that when it comes to government agents, [self-defense and the defense of others] are governed by different moral principles from those that govern defensive [action] in other contexts. This presupposes that it makes a difference to the permissibility of lying to, deceiving, sabotaging, or killing an aggressor in self-defense or the defence of others that the aggressor is wearing a uniform, holds an office, or was appointed by someone who was in turn elected by my neighbours. According to the prevailing view, my neighbours can eliminate my right to self-defense or the defense of others by granting someone an office. This is especially puzzling because almost everyone today recognizes that the law and justice are not the same thing; laws can be deeply unjust.”

Jason Brennan, When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice

Proponents of the special immunity thesis support their view by asserting that the special moral status of the government, and its agents, arises from the fact that governments are both legitimate and authoritative. In political philosophy a government is legitimate if it has permission to create and enforce certain rules, laws and regulations over a population living in a certain geographic area. While a government has authority if it creates a moral obligation within its citizens to obey its commands. Brennan provides the analogy of a boxing match to explain the distinction between legitimacy and authority.

“We might thus say that in a boxing match, punching is legitimate. But neither boxer has an obligation to let the other hit them. Each boxer can feel free to duck, block, and evade the others’ punches. So neither boxer has the authority to punch, though punches are legitimate. So it might conceivably be with government: perhaps certain governments legitimately create and enforce rules, but no one has a duty to obey those governments.”

Jason Brennan, When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice

For the special immunity thesis to hold, a government must possess authority. Legitimacy alone will not suffice. For if a government is legitimate, but not authoritative, it can create rules, laws, and regulations, but just as a boxer can evade punches in a boxing match, the citizens can evade the laws of a government lacking authority. What is more, for the special immunity thesis to hold a government’s authority must extend beyond creating a duty within us to obey its just laws, to creating a duty within us to acquiesce when it commits an injustice. Without this authority we are not duty bound to obey the government and when it commits an injustice, we can use force to defend ourselves.

And herein lies the fatal flaw of the special immunity thesis – governments lack authority. For thousands of years defenders of government authority have attempted to justify this status, but all attempts have failed, or as Brennan writes:

“There’s a serious problem with invoking democratic authority to defend the special immunity thesis: there is strong reason to believe that no governments, democratic or otherwise, have any authority. The doctrine of government authority has been subjected to sustained and overwhelming philosophical criticism over the past 30 years. . .the dominant view among political philosophers who work on this topic now appears to be that certain governments have legitimacy but not authority. . .As Leslie Greene says in his Stanford Encyclopedia article surveying the field, “There are plausible objections to each of the dominant justifications for the duty to obey the law. . . Each leaves significant gaps in the authority of law.” Ned Dobos similarly concludes that “there is today a growing consensus to the effect that no theory of political [authority] succeeds.”

Jason Brennan, When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice

If governments lack authority, this does not mean that we have a right to break all laws, as some laws align with moral principles that are independent of the existence of state – be it laws that prevent murder, rape, assault, theft or fraud. These laws are rooted in common law principles, and most people, save the psychopath, intuitively recognize the justice in obeying such ethical principles.

Without government authority there is no justification for the special immunity thesis and if this thesis fails, then the moral parity thesis is what rises to take its place. The moral parity thesis asserts that the principles that justify self-defense, or the defense of another, against an agent of the state, are the same as those that justify defense against a private citizen. For example, under the moral parity thesis we can defend ourselves from a crazy neighbour who wants to kidnap and imprison us for drinking alcohol, and we can also defend ourselves from a government agent who tries to kidnap and imprison us for using any of the drugs politicians disapprove of. Or as Brennan explains:

“The conditions which a person may, in self-defense or the defence of others, deceive, lie to, sabotage, attack, or kill a fellow citizen, or destroy private property, are also conditions under which a civilian may do the same to a government agent (acting ex officio) or government property.”

Jason Brennan, When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice

One objection to the moral parity thesis is that if too many people accept it, it might disrupt the functioning of our democratic system. For it could lead to an excessive amount of resistance among the citizenry and social chaos may ensue. But as Brennan writes concerning this objection:

“I wonder if this objection mostly has the problem backward. The worry here is supposed to be . . .that people will misapply the theory, mistakenly resisting government agents even when they should not. On the contrary, it seems more plausible that citizens are more likely to engage in wrongful obedience than they are to engage in wrongful resistance. The typical person is a conformist, deferential to authority, and fearful for their own safety. When they watch cops beating a person to death, they don’t intervene; they film it and put it on YouTube. When their governments order them to kill foreigners in an unjust war, they do.”

Jason Brennan, When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice

Decades of laboratory research, most famously the Milgrim Experiments, reveal that most people have a predisposition to obey authority figures, even when their commands are immoral. Furthermore, there are countless real-life examples that confirm these laboratory findings. From the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war, to the Soviet Gulags, the Nazi Concentration camps, the Armenian Genocide and the man-made Ukrainian famine, the examples are endless. In all these situations, mankind would have been far better off if people recognized that government agents are not deserving of special treatment and that resistance is the moral thing to do when anyone commits an injustice, whether they are a government agent or not.

Does this mean that we should start disobeying and resisting the government whenever it violates our rights and when self-defense would be justified were the same action committed by a private citizen? Not necessarily. For there are practical considerations to take into account. We don’t want to make ourselves a martyr merely to resist a minor government infraction and we must understand that governments will use the full force of the state to respond to those who resist its laws. Battles must be picked wisely, or as Brennan writes:

“Lying, deception, sabotage, destruction, and violence are dangerous. We should be self-aware and recognize that we are prone to error. We should be aware that defensive actions are morally risky. We should also be aware of our own epistemic uncertainty.”

Jason Brennan, When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice

With that said we should draw a line in the sand and realize that at a certain point government injustices need to be met with resistance, and that failure to resist paves the way for the greatest form of government injustice that mankind has ever known – namely totalitarianism.

“Government agents have a job to do. In the first instance, their job is to protect our rights and implement justice, not to trample our rights and to thwart justice. When government agents choose to do the latter, they exceed any putative authority that they might have. When government becomes the enemy, we may protect ourselves. Our rights do not disappear because senators voted to ignore them or because a cop is having a bad day.”

Jason Brennan, When All Else Fails – The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice

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