MILITARY OBEDIENCE TO BAD LAW. THE HIGH EXAMPLE OF SOCRATES COMMENDED
Lest some false interpreter should suggest that in here condemning compulsory vaccination in the Army and Navy and urging its abolishment I am attempting “to incite insubordination, disloyalty, or mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States,” as expressed in the Overman Law, I would now call careful attention to the obvious fact that urging the abolition of a bad law, or petitioning government “for a redress of grievances,” is not urging disobedience to any law, is not inciting mutiny or refusal of duty or disloyalty to the United States, but is a clear constitutional right under Article I of the first amendment, which right, it is there stated, cannot be abridged or denied.
If any loyal soldiers, opposed to forced vaccination, should ask my advice whether they should accept or refuse it, I would advise them to protest against compulsion and ask for its abolition, but I would not advise them to deliberately disobey any legal military rule. And I would further say here that I believe that any soldier who might be injured or killed as a result of any vaccination, to which he was forced to submit by any military law, would suffer and die in the service of his country with just as much honor as if he had died on the battle-field; or with as much honor as in the case of Socrates, the great Grecian soldier and philosopher, who died in obedience to bad law and unjust judgment.
I would further advise all conscientious objectors to forced vaccination to consider the teaching of some strict moralists, that it is better to obey all laws, however bad, than to disobey any of them, and that this obedience and sacrifice is the first duty of the soldier and citizen. And it is also taught that this obedience to bad law, after full and due protest against it, is the best way to bring about its repeal in due time.
This seems to have been the teaching of the great Socrates—the pagan Christ, 399 B.C.—and was the chief lesson of his tragic death. Knowing that he was unjustly and falsely condemned and that his judges acted wrongly, yet within the forms of law, he refused to escape this false and unjust judgment, although he could easily have done so with the help of powerful friends who urged this upon him. Yet he nobly accepted the judgment of law and drank the cup of poison to which he was legally but wrongly sentenced, and thus gave up his life to vindicate what he believed was the sacred duty of the citizen to obey all laws, just or unjust, and the still more sacred duty of the lawmaker and the judge, that all laws and judgments should be absolutely just and true and faithful to all rights of the citizen. If, therefore, it be the first duty of the citizen and soldier to obey all law, good or bad, what a much greater duty is laid upon the lawmaker, the law enforcer, the Judge, and, we might also say, the Commander-in-Chief, that all law and all judgments be absolutely right, just and true, and in no way destructive to the rights of the citizen or soldier who has to obey these laws, good or bad! This was the grand lesson intended by Socrates in the sacrifice of his life as a protest and indictment against bad law and unjust judgment, and we may here, properly, apply this great Socratic lesson, which has morally thundered down “the corridors of time” for the past twenty-four centuries, to all the evil laws for compulsory vaccination which now exist and which should be immediately repealed and replaced by just and equitable rules for voluntary vaccination only as proved by the many reasons already given.—“Every law not based on wisdom is a menace to the State.” See page v.