The Fantasy of Conscience and the Reality of Power
I was listening to the history of Kansas, of Quantrill’s raiders and John Brown, and I realized again that even before the Civil War, and even during it, the lines of “good” and “bad” are not so easy to draw. The story is usually told cleanly — abolitionists were the righteous ones, pro-slavery forces the villains. But the reality on the ground was messier.
Kansas was a battlefield before the war was officially declared. Vigilantes crossed the border from Missouri, burning and killing. John Brown struck back with his sons, dragging pro-slavery farmers from their homes and hacking them to death in the night. To Southerners, Brown was a terrorist. To many Northerners, he was a prophet. To farmers caught in the crossfire, both sides looked like butchers.
And yet Brown’s uncompromising stance carried him into history. His raid on Harpers Ferry failed, but it forced America to see the hypocrisy of calling itself free while holding millions in chains. Brown did not theorize, he acted. He was tested, and he paid with his life.
He admired Brown deeply, giving speeches in his defense when most Americans called him insane. Thoreau saw in Brown the consistency he himself lacked. Thoreau had spent one night in jail for refusing to pay a tax, only to be released when someone else paid it for him. His life in the woods at Walden was subsidized by his family. He gave us a philosophy of conscience, but he was never thrown into the fire. Thoreau remained safe in the fantasy of resistance, while Brown lived and died in the reality of it.
That’s the irony: history remembers Thoreau as the father of civil disobedience, the inspiration for Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. But the line doesn’t really add up. Thoreau admired John Brown, a man who embraced bloodshed. Gandhi took the safe part of Thoreau — the idea of resisting unjust power through conscience — and stripped out the violence. It made for a cleaner story, one that could be sold to a world hungry for saints.
But even Gandhi’s story is not what people pretend. Gandhi was clever, not naïve. He understood that non-violence worked because it was aimed at Britain, a colonial power with newspapers, a Parliament, and an uneasy conscience. The British could be shamed. They cared about how they looked to the world. Gandhi played that weakness brilliantly. His marches and fasts made headlines in London, and London blinked.
Now imagine Gandhi under Hitler. Or Stalin. Or Mao. There, his non-violence would not have been a weapon — it would have been suicide. Hitler would have crushed him without hesitation. Stalin would have had him shot before he reached the end of his street. Mao would have made him disappear into a labor camp. None of them cared about newspapers, about being judged by the world, about appearing moral. They cared only about power, and power is never ashamed.
So this is the truth:
Thoreau gave us the fantasy of resistance by conscience.
John Brown gave us the reality of resistance with blood.
Gandhi weaponized the fantasy — but only because he knew his opponent cared about appearances.
And that is the hard edge people don’t want to face: conscience alone does not change the world. It only works if power allows it to work. Against an opponent with no shame, the fantasy dissolves instantly.
The lesson is uncomfortable, but clear: the lines of good and evil in history are never as clean as the textbooks. And the victories of conscience are always fragile, always conditional. The dream of resistance can inspire — but the reality of power will always decide.