Civil Disobedience

For the reflection and analysis that we are assigned with this time we had to read a essay by Henry David Thourou titled Civil Disobedience. At first when I saw the assignment I groaned at the thought of reading an essay because quite frankly I usually am bored to tears by such. But, when I read this essay I was not because he actually has some extremely intelligent well made points present in it. The essay is divided up into three parts, the first part being about government and it says "That government is best which governs least."(Thoreau). Which I pretty much completely agree with. I do think that government is entitled to power, but in a lot of societes today their government has way too much power. The struggle power was actually a reason our country was founded. The first colonists of the United States came because they did not feel they were being treated fairly over in England and they did something about it. After the war when we were granted our freedom, they purposely designed our consititution at the time titled the Articles Of Confederation to have a weak central government because they were being run in a dictatorship before. The essay also goes on to say in part one that Why can't there be a government where right and wrong are not decided by the majority but by conscience? Thoreau writes, "Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward."(Thoreau). The world would be superb if right and wrong was decided not by the government, but by our concious, but sadly that is pretty much impossible because there are good and bad people and not everyone has a strong enough concious, and it would probably result in complete chaos. It is not possible for a nation to be run on complete morality. A common theme of the Trancendentilism period is morality which is strongly present in part one on how the government should be ran(Quinn). After the Articles of Confederation were in place people could not behave and riots and rebellions occured that could not be stopped, which in turn led to The Constitution now being written designed with a stronger central government than before.

Part two is about how society should respond to injustice of the government and about how it should not be decided by majority because that is not really doing something about it, but rather just as a common whole what they express they would like to see done. He is against this which is self worth over society. Self worth over society is another common theme of the Transcendentilism period(Quinn).

Part three is about Thoreau's personal experiences with civil disobedience. He says that he hasn't paid a poll tax in six years and that he spent a night in jail once because of this. His experience in jail did not hurt his spirit: "I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to break through, before they could get to be as free as I was." (Thoreau).The masses can't force him to do anything; he is subject only to those who obey a higher law. This is showing a bit of feeling over reason which is also a common theme(Quinn). He should probably obey the law because that is what you are supposed to do but he does not feel like it so he does not.

Thoreau, Henry. "Civil Disobedience." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 26 Jan. 2012.

Quinn, Edward. "Transcendentalism." A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= DLLT1007&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 26, 2012).