Opinion | Self-reliance fades as conformity and cowardice take hold, resist

In a time when self-reliance and independent thought once defined the American spirit, conformity now reigns. The courage to stand alone, to challenge the mob, to think for oneself — these are no longer virtues but liabilities. If Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were alive today, they would recognize the peril we face. They warned us against this, yet here we are, sleepwalking into a future where those who think are cast as enemies and those who obey are rewarded.

The American tradition of self-reliance is not just about material independence but intellectual and moral independence — the ability to form one’s own opinions, to reason without fear, to resist the pressure to conform. Emerson understood this when he wrote, “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” The greatest threat to individual liberty, he knew, is not always government oppression but the collective pressure to submit, to blend in, to follow.

As a teenager, I read Self-Reliance and The American Scholar not as academic exercises but as blueprints for independent thought and self-determined living. Emerson’s call for independence of thought shaped my worldview. Yet today, what he feared has come to pass. This is not an era that rewards intellectual courage — it punishes it. The political class, both left and right, no longer leads with principle but bends to the mob. The rise of populism, anti-intellectualism, and moral cowardice has turned political leadership into a performance, a show for the masses rather than a duty to truth.

For Emerson, self-reliance was not just an intellectual pursuit but a moral obligation. But thought alone is not enough. His contemporary, Henry David Thoreau, understood that independence of mind means nothing without the courage to act. “The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right,” he wrote in Civil Disobedience. His own resistance — refusing to pay taxes that funded the Mexican-American War — led to his brief imprisonment. That small act of defiance rippled through history. A century later, Gandhi used Thoreau’s philosophy to break the British Empire’s hold on India. Martin Luther King Jr. cited Thoreau as a guiding influence, writing from his Birmingham jail cell, “I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”

These men understood that progress is never achieved through blind obedience but through the willingness to stand against injustice. And yet, in our time, we have inverted their lessons. We do not celebrate self-reliance; we mock it. We do not elevate independent thinkers; we shun them. The modern Know-Nothings attack the very institutions that produce knowledge, dismissing education as elitist and critical thinking as dangerous. They weaponize the language of faith and patriotism to demand obedience, all while eroding the principles that sustain a free society.

This is not some distant or abstract trend. It is happening here, in Alabama, right now.

Look at the attempts to suppress uncomfortable history, to rewrite the past to serve a political agenda. The state legislature has pushed laws restricting how teachers can discuss race, history, and systemic injustice — because some find the truth inconvenient. The Alabama Department of Education is purging books from schools, not because they contain obscenity but because they contain ideas that challenge a particular worldview. Public universities are under attack for fostering diversity of thought. Even libraries — long a sanctuary for free inquiry — are now battlegrounds, with politicians threatening to defund them for refusing to censor their shelves.

Thoreau anticipated this kind of state control when he warned, “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law.” But in Alabama, our leaders do not push back against injustice; they enforce it. Rather than standing for something greater than themselves, they kneel before the loudest voices, fearing political consequences more than moral failure.

Emerson knew the dangers of such cowardice. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” And yet, in modern politics, principles are a liability.

But all is not lost.

Self-reliance is not merely a personal virtue but the foundation of a healthy democracy. Thoreau showed that resistance to injustice starts with individuals who refuse to comply. Gandhi and King proved that moral courage, not brute force, changes the world. These men understood that progress is never achieved through obedience to the status quo but through the willingness to defy it.

It is not enough to lament the state of the world; we must do something about it. We must refuse to surrender to the tides of conformity. We must reject the false choice between populist outrage and elite detachment and instead cultivate a society where people think for themselves.

Read widely. Question authority. Support leaders who stand on principle rather than poll numbers. Encourage independent thought in our communities, our schools, and in our homes. If we do not, we will find ourselves in the very world Emerson feared — a world where nothing is sacred but the integrity of one’s own mind, and yet no one has the courage to act upon it.

The question before us is not whether we will be swept along by the currents of conformity. The question is whether we will have the courage to resist.

And if enough of us refuse to be sheep, then perhaps the wolves will find they no longer have a flock to lead.