Passive Civil Disobedience: Perhaps Not the American Way?

As we have been talking about the non-violent approach to civil disobedience employed by Ghandi and his followers in India, and expounded upon in Satyagraha, I have thought more about why the American separation from the British Empire was so drastically different. While no sociologist or anthropologist who can identify the cultural reasons and implications of my idea, I nonetheless believe that there is something ingrained in the American psyche that causes us to be more forceful in defending our beliefs than other peoples around the world.

Looking back over our history, when the American people have tried to defend their rights, particularly those pertaining to freedom, we have always done so in a forceful way. Even before the Revolutionary War, we resorted to actions such as the Boston Tea Party; an act of destroying British property / goods. Then we had the Revolutionary War, followed by the War of 1812. After that, our country was firmly established, and our sovereignty secure.

The violence does not stop there, however. When the region now comprising Texas and the other border states with Mexico came into dispute in the mid-nineteenth century, the Mexican War ensued. Here, we had many future leaders of the American Civil War fighting alongside each other. Again, our response to possibly losing this land, this portion of our freedom, was war.

The American Civil War is arguably the greatest example of this trend in American history. No matter which cause of the war you agree with, be it to free the slaves held in the South or to defend a state's right to govern itself, you again have this idea of freedom being challenged. The resulting violent protest lasted four years and ended with over 350,000 wounded and nearly 200,000 dead. This was the ultimate example of the American reaction to threatened freedom, for it was American vs. American, each with their own views of why they were fighting.

Now, this is by no means to say that such events are unique to the history of the United States. It is merely intended as a way of identifying one possible reason why the idea of non-violent civil disobedience, which Kozinn points out is the main theme of Satyagraha, may seem rather foreign to our culture, one that has known violence as the standard reaction to threatened freedom.