He said, "You're all right, of course. It's important to have protection for every situation, whether we specify it or not. I suggest that what you're looking for is an umbrella under which you can operate-an all-purpose rule."
He let us argue for only a few moments, then brought us back to the issue again. "Your demands are valid. Look at your rules again, and see if you can boil them down to one or two sentences."
We did as he suggested. With a little help, eventually we came up with "The government shall be accountable to the people for its actions. The people shall have the right to express their differences freely."
"Congratulations," smiled Whitlaw. "Now what happens if I refuse to accept it?"
"You don't have any choice," said Mariette.
"Why not?"
"Because if you don't, we'll just rebel again."
"Uh huh. What if I hire some more football players?"
"You can't afford to hire as many as you'll need."
"I'll raise taxes."
That prompted some groans and an immediate response from one of the boys who had not been expelled. "Where do I sign up to join the rebellion?"
"That's why you don't have any choice," Hank said. "You don't have the tax base."
"You're right," Whitlaw said. He went back to the front of the room. "All right, then-are we in agreement on this point? That if a government is not accountable to its citizenry, that citizenry is justified in removing that government from power-by whatever means necessary?"
There was general assent.
"I see. The kicker in there is the last line. `By whatever means necessary.' Obviously it includes open rebellion. How about terrorism? How about assassination? And at what point do you decide that those actions are necessary?"
Paul Jastrow was still sullen. He said, "When there's no other course of action left to us."
"All right, let's consider that. Was your rebellion justified?" General assent.
"Because I didn't want to listen to what you wanted to say, right?"
Again agreement.
Whitlaw said, "Suppose I had set up a complaint box. Would the rebellion still have been justified?"
There was a thoughtful pause while each of us considered it. I raised my hand. "What would you do with the complaints put into the box?"
Whitlaw grinned. "I'd throw them away at the end of each day without reading them."
"Then, yes," I said. "The rebellion would have been justified."
"What if I read the complaints?"
"What would you do about them?"
"'Nothing."
"It's still justified."
"What if I acted on those I agreed with? All the ones that didn't inconvenience me personally."
I thought about it. "No, that's still not good enough."
Whitlaw looked exasperated. "What is it you people want?"
"A fair system of handling our grievances."
"Ahh, now we're getting somewhere. Do you begin to understand now? Your credo up there is very pretty, but it's worthless without the legal guarantees to back it up. What kind of system are you asking for-uh, McCarthy, is it?"
"Yes, sir. How about an arbitration panel of three students? You pick one, we pick one and they pick the third. My father's union uses that system to handle disagreements."
"All right, suppose I decreed that's the kind of system we'll have?"
"No, sir, it has to be voted on. We all have to agree to it. Otherwise, it's still a case of you dictating to us."
Whitlaw nodded and looked at his watch. "Congratulations. In just a little more than an hour, you've recreated more than a thousand years of human history. You've overthrown a government, established a charter for a new system and created a court system with which to enforce it. That's a fair day's work."
The bell rang then. We'd used an entire ninety-minute class period. As we started to gather our books, Whitlaw held up a hand. "Hold it. Stay in your seats. You're not going to your next class today. Don't worry, your other instructors have been informed. They know not to expect you. Does anyone need to pee? Okay, take ten minutes. Be back here and ready to go at eleven-forty."
When we resumed, Joey Hubre was the first to raise his hand. "When do we get our money back?"
Whitlaw looked at him severely. "Don't you understand? You don't. The government always plays for keeps."
"But ... but ... but we thought this was-"
"What? A game?" Whitlaw looked a little angry. "Weren't you paying attention? This was a tyranny! Would you have overthrown the government if you thought I wasn't playing for keeps? Of course not!"
"All I want is my money back-"
"It's part of the national treasury now. And even if I wanted to give it back, I couldn't. I've been overthrown. It's up to the new government to decide what to do with the money."
The classroom was getting tense again. Janice stood up and said, "Mr. Whitlaw! You were wrong to take our money!"
"No, I wasn't-as soon as I declared myself a government, I was within my rights. You were wrong for letting me get away with it. Every single one of you. You!" He pointed at the first student who had handed over a casey. "-you were wrong for handing me that first coin. Why did you do it?"
"You told me to."
"Did I tell you I was going to give you anything in return for it?"
"No."
"Did I tell you I was going to give it back to you when we were through?"
"No."
"Then why did you give it to me?"
"Uh..."
"Right. You gave it to me. I didn't take it. So why are you telling me I'm the one who did wrong?"
"You had an army!"
"Not until after you gave me the money to pay for it." He said to the whole class, "Your only mistake was your timing. You should have rebelled when I declared myself your government. I had no right to do so, but you let me get away with it. You should have demanded accountability then-before I had enough money to hire an army."
He was right. He had us there. We all looked a little embarrassed.
"Well, what do we do now?" wailed Mariette.
"I don't know. I'm not the government anymore. You overthrew me. You took away my power. All I'm doing now is following orders. Your orders. I'll do anything with this money that a majority of you can agree on."
It took less than thirty seconds to pass a resolution requiring the disbursement of all funds collected in the recent taxation.
Whitlaw nodded and opened his desk drawer. He started counting coins. "Uh, we have a problem-there are forty-four of you in this class. But there are only thirty caseys here. If you'll remember, the former government spent eighteen caseys on an army."
Four people stood up to author the next resolution, requiring the return of funds paid to former members of the Imperial Guard. Whitlaw vetoed that. "Sorry. Doesn't that fall into the realm of confiscation? Remember the five-casey note I took unfairly? You just had a rebellion because you didn't want a government able to do that. Now you're setting up a new government to do exactly the same thing."
"But this is different-"
"No it isn't! Confiscation is confiscation! It doesn't matter who does the confiscating-the person still loses something!"
"But ... then how do we redress previous wrongs?"
"I don't know either. You're the government now. You tell me."
"So why can't we just take the money back?"
"Because the army was fairly paid. They did their job and they were paid a fair wage for what they did. You can't take that money away from them now because it's theirs."
"But you had no right to give it to them!"
"Yes, I did! I was the government!"
Hank Chelsea was standing then. "Wait a minute, sir! I think we all understand what you're trying to teach us. We have to find a fair way to do this, don't we?"
"If you can, you'll be a better man than I am. In the eleven years that I've been teaching this class, not one session has ever found a way that was both fair and legal to take money out of one person's pocket and put it into another's." He motioned for Hank to sit down. "Let me give you this to think about: a government-any government-is nothing more than a system for reapportioning wealth. It takes money from one group of people and gives it to another group of people. And when it happens that enough people decide that they don't like the way the wealth is being reapportioned, that's when that government will be replaced by another one more to the people's liking. As has happened here! But you cannot use the new government to redress all of the wrongs of the previous government-not without creating far more problems than you'll ever clean up. You'll end up with a government entirely concerned with past events and not present ones. That's a sure way to set yourself up to fail. If you're going to win at this game, you have to deal with circumstances the way they are, not the way they used to be or the way you'd like them to be. In other words, only operate on those events you have control over. That's the only way to produce results. The real question, then, is, what do you have control over? We'll probably spend the rest of the semester tackling that one. Right now, let's handle the immediate problem." He opened his desk drawer. "There are forty-four of you and only thirty caseys here. If you don't reimburse the six members of the Imperial Guard, you're still going to be eight caseys short. And one of you is going to be at least four caseys short because I took a fiver off him."