“The Most Dangerous Superstition” in 1869 Cheyenne

Authority Comes to Hell on Wheels

Just about the time we began to watch season four of Hell on Wheels, I started reading Larken Rose’s 2012 book, The Most Dangerous Superstition. As the episodes unfolded, I quickly realized that the stories were a perfect illustration of the entire issue that Rose discusses. The thought occurred to me to take a cue from Mr. Sean W. Malone over at The Foundation for Economic Education, whose video essays, Out of Frame, compare popular culture against real world events. So, grab a cup of coffee, or your favorite adult beverage, as we take a glimpse around the fictionalized version of 1869 Cheyenne thru the lens of The Most Dangerous Superstition.

The Most Dangerous Superstition

I ordered Rose’s book on January 20, after someone posted, and I watched, The Tiny Dot Video. Interestingly, I order Jeff Berwick’s Controlled Demolition the next day, but read it first, and he makes mention of Superstition toward the end of his book. Rose starts with the bottom line upfront, or as we would say in the military, the BLUF,

The belief in “authority,” which includes all belief in “government,” is irrational and self-contradictory; it is contrary to civilization and morality, and constitutes the most dangerous, destructive superstition that has ever existed.

That statement in and of itself, is a lot to get one’s brain around. However, Rose spends 212 pages backing up and explaining his premise, with conviction, logic, and example. Perhaps the strongest cases for his argument are the Milgram experiments and the 1971 Stanford study on a mock prison with college students. Rose does an excellent job of summarizing those beginning on page 54, and if the reader is not familiar with either, then that point alone is perhaps reason enough to dive into this book. The author does not let his argument stand on those two points alone, but fills page after page with examples drawn from both history and his own personal experience.

I can’t say I agree prima facia with all his points though. There are multiple examples where he attacks both military and law enforcement with sweeping characterization as mindless automatons, or something similar. Perhaps I took issue with this for I already have something of an antiauthoritarian attitude. I pushed back and even spouted off to senior officers several times over my 20-year naval career, which is why I retired as only an O-4. Also, my better half was a cop in her younger days, and I assure you that she was, and is, far from a mindless automaton. So, I know from both my own actions, and those of whom I served with, that Rose’s broad assessment is not 100% accurate. Still, I appreciate his perspective.

Perhaps the most interesting few pages for me were near the end, when he points out some rather glaring contradictions between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and within the Constitution itself. Those who’ve read my other articles know that I am an ardent supporter of the Constitution, but I will admit that Rose gave me more than ample reason for pause and consideration.

Hell on Wheels at Cheyenne, 1869

Hell on Wheels follows the character of Cullen Bohannon as he makes his way from downtrodden, heartbroken, plantation owner from Meridian, Mississippi after the Civil War to chief construction engineer on first the Union Pacific, and then the Central Pacific, railroads as they race across the west to complete the transcontinental railroad. While Bohannan is a fictional character, played by Anson Mount, several characters are based on real individuals. Principle to the discussion is the series’ main antagonist, sometime protagonist, Thomas C. Durant, one of the Union Pacific principals, played by Colm Meaney. The other is the season four antagonist, John Allen Campbell, the provisional governor of Wyoming territory, played by Jake Weber.

As a total aside, all three have connections to the Star Trek franchise. Mount pivots later to play Captain Pike in the new Discovery series; Meaney had the long running role of Chief O’Brien; and Weber has appeared in one episode of Discovery.

As with any historical drama, the screen writers take liberty with actual events and timelines. I won’t bother to point those out here, but rather just summarize the events of the season as presented.

As season four opens, Campbell and perhaps half a dozen assistants, have just arrived in Cheyenne. Grant has appointed Campbell to establish law and order in the new territory, and he aims to do so, come hell or high water. He has the full authority of the United States Federal Government at his back.

Upon arrival, they witness a shooting at the local salon. The shooter caught his opponent red handed cheating at a game of poker. Refusing to admit the err of his ways, the other player shoots the cheater right there at the table; typical street justice in the wild west. This would not do for Campbell and his squad, even though several others witnessed the actual card cheating of the shooting victim. Campbell keeps spouting off about the law this and the law that and aims to make an example of the shooter, actual justice be damned.

Campbell holds a trial immediately, which is more akin to a kangaroo court. The only testimony is that pertaining to the shooting, none concerning the cheating, which precipitated the shooting, and as a result, Campbell’s judge sentences the shooter to hanging. One of Campbell’s men strings him up the rafters of the salon, only feet away from where he shot the card cheat. Because Campbell has full authority as the governor, few speak up in the man’s defense, let alone actually step up to save him from the noose.

Later, the governor, determined to curtail violence in the town, declares the salon to be a gun free zone, which is a blatant violation of the Second Amendment. Nonetheless, because the government, in the face of John Campbell, has decreed it so, partitioners, including our intrepid hero, Cullen Bohannon, willingly take off their guns and deposit them into a barrel at the entrance to the bar.

As the season progresses, we see several examples by Campbell on the use of eminent domain. The first being with the bar, where the shooting took place. Another is between Durant and Campbell concerning property rights along the rail line. Campbell is determined to build his statehouse on a hillside owned by the Union Pacific. In all these cases, the writers portray the new governor as bullish, arrogant, and overbearing and Campbell never really offers “just compensation” for his takings. Suffice to say, I’ve never been a fan of eminent domain myself, even though the Founding Fathers embedded it within the Fifth Amendment.

But perhaps the most egregious example of the over zealousness of Campbell and his goon squad comes near the end of the season. Without detailing the backstory of several episodes, a very nefarious individual, one peripherally from Bohannon’s past, Sydney Snow, has made his way into the town. Ruth, who all in the town, including Governor Campbell, hold in high regard, is the minster of the local church. She has taken a young orphan boy as her ward. Ruth also had at one point a more than soft heart for Bohannon. The feeling was, and still is mutual, although life has taken him in a different direction.

Sydney ends up burning Ruth’s church to the ground, and in the process, also kills her ward, who had been hiding in the floorboards. As he makes his way thru town to confront Bohannon, who at this point in the story is a deputy, she steps out from the hotel where she had been grieving, and shoots the villous Snow in the leg. Notwithstanding Bohannon’s efforts to save him, in the end he bleeds out, which in the eyes of the law now makes Ruth guilty of murder.

Despite Campbell’s continued pontificating about the law, just as with the card cheat shooter, Ruth faces something more akin to a kangaroo court than an actual trial by jury. Campbell could have held a bona fide trial, in which the jury would have no doubt found her not guilty by reason of insufferable grief, or he could have just pardoned the woman. He finally does, after Cullen’s insistence, but she refuses the pardon. She prefers, I suppose, to face death rather than live with her self-imposed guilt, which is no doubt based on the mistranslation of the King James Version of Exodus 20:13, “Thou shall not kill,” which is more properly translated as, “Thou shall not murder.” Sydney deserved to die for his crimes. Did Ruth kill him? Yes. Did she commit murder? Certainly not. Rather than commuting the sentence, Campbell again aims to make an example of Ruth, accepts her refusal of the pardon and orders her to hang.

And again, because Campbell represents authority, the United States Federal Government, none of the townsfolk come to her aide. As I watched the episode Thirteen Steps, I kept waiting for Cullen to make a grand play, akin to Lancelot saving Guinevere, but sadly he doesn’t. Although he just spent the entire night with her in the jail, each professing their love for the other, with Bohannon showing more emotion than the rest of the entire fours season put together, he watches her succumb to the law and the hangman’s noose.

Thru the Lens of Mr. Rose’s Perspective

In the series, the townsfolk far outnumber Campbell and his men, which indeed is the universal case with any government. Although Cheyenne, and Hell on Wheels, which was actually the camp at the rail head as it progressed west, were rough and tumble environs, folks had established their own order and were building not only a railroad but a new life for themselves. As Campbell rolled into town, how might things had been different if the town had resisted his goonish, and in many cases thuggish, attempts at imposing his own version of law and order? Mr. Rose is basically an anarchist, preferring to allow people to work things out for themselves, and that is essentially what was already occurring in the fictionalized version of the town.

What if the townsfolk had said to Campbell, “Get out, you have no authority here”? How might things had been different? But let’s back that up just one step, perhaps Rose will forgive me. The only law applicable at the time should have been the Constitution. Campbell kept touting the law but blatantly makes a mockery of it on more than several occasions. What if the townsfolk had said, “Stop. We need a proper jury trial for the card cheat shooter.” “Stop. We are not going to put down our guns, it is our Second Amendment and God given right to carry them. You have no right to demand we disarm.”

What if the concept of eminent domain was not in the Fifth Amendment, or what if people just said, “Wait a minute. This doesn’t make any sense. This is my land and the government has zero right to take it from me, “just compensation” or not.”?

What if the townsfolk had risen against Campbell and crew, for they certainly could have stopped them, and demanded Ruth be set free? What if Governor Campbell had let compassion triumph over an obsessive/compulsive attachment to the letter of the law? Ruth’s hanging certainly served no version of justice. What if Bohannon had chosen a path closer to the heart and saved her?

2020

Legality, morality, ethicality, and justice rarely, if ever, intersect. Just because congress, or the local town council, passes a law, does not mean that it is moral, ethical, or just. In fact, laws are often far from any of those concepts.

Toward the end of his term Trump had ordered The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission as a study on how to roll back some of the cultural damage done over the last fifty years. One of the items the commission recommends is a return to reverence for the laws, and they quote President Lincoln:

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;-let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap-let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;-let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.

I urge caution on this, for reverence means to honor, to show respect for, to show deference, especially, profound adoring awed respect. It is the last part that gets us into trouble, for it ignores the fact that laws are rarely moral, ethical, or just, and are frequently nothing more than the whims of those in power.

Yet another aside, as I read Lincoln’s words I recall my perspective that a significant burden of blame rests upon Lincoln’s shoulders for the unbridled expansion of the federal government; that, however, is a subject for an entirely other essay. Nonetheless, it is perhaps fitting that Mr. Lincoln holds the ends of the rope connecting our story of the 1860s to the present day.

At the end of his book, Larken Rose, argues for no government, no rulers, and makes compelling cases for societal organization and defense without those. It is an ideal worth striving for. But humanity has much to learn and evolve, and my one critique of Rose’s ideal is that he does not fully address the presence of true and genuine evil within this world.

That said, what if 40, 30, 20 or even ten percent of people last year had said, “NO. No COVID lockdowns, no masking, no travel restrictions. You have no right, no authority Mr. Government.”? How might have 2020 been different? What if more people started to look more to their own moral compass for guidance rather than to “the law”? What if more understood, as Martin Luther King did, that

"one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws"?

What would happen if ten percent of people started to view the world thru the lens of Larken Rose’s perspective? What if just a small percentage of people shook the most dangerous superstition? How much different would the world be?

---

All for your consideration.

Thanks for reading folks.

Have a great weekend

🥃🥃

and namaste.

😌🙏

Mark Stansell

March 27, 2021