RIGHT TO RESISTANCE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

For Mr. Kohr to disagree with Professor Chafee's sensible statement of the duty of the citizen to cooperate with his government is but to carp with the law as it has stood since the founding of the Republic. To state that it is the duty of the citizen to appear before congressional committees is only to state that it has always been the right of the government to compel him to do so. This is old stuff, beyond cavil, and common knowledge to anyone concerned with the workings of American government.

It appears, however, that Mr. Kohr's letters is addressed not to the positive law of the Unites States but so some loftier principle, perhaps to that current of political theory which found expression in the conception. "The Right of Resistance," a tradition traceable in Western political literature down through the centuries. But not even in Althusius or Locke two savants whom Mr. Kohr might have used as footnotes to his exposition, will he find adequate answers to the crucial questions which ask, first, precisely when does a legitimate government become--as the classicists put it--a "tyranny" justifying disobedience; and second, who is to make this finding of fact. Answers to these questions must turn on decisions reached, in our society, by millions of Americans. That the American people have affirmed their faith in the fundamental decency of their governmental system is abundantly evidenced in the vast numbers who participated in the national election of the other day. If, then, Mr. Kohr dissents from their judgment, concludes that he is governed tyrannically, and decides to obey only those laws which he finds agreeable, what can one say to him but that he proceeds at his peril?

Of course the supreme tragedy is that what would otherwise, be an interesting debate among professors has become, in this Age of Anxiety, a matter of one's job, one's security and one's freedom. But realization of this fact does not negate what continues to be true even in an altered political atmosphere. --Joseph D. Becker 3L