Civil Disobedience Analysis

The American society was developed on a necessity for the voice of the populace; the fundamental goal of the nation was to create a union based not solely by the binding nature of centralized government, but by the expressionism of smaller parties within a system. As history progressed, the shifts in technology, social issues, economic status, and foreign relations have stimulated the growth of the central government. In it’s purpose to restore order through the construction of regulation, the voices of the people are often muted. When a law is oppressive in nature it is our civic duty to speak up in form of civil disobedience to maintain a free society, but with our emphasis on individualism, Americans today mistake the context necessary to warrant it. But what is the difference between a law that is inherently unjust and a law we personally find unjust?

He vouched for the peaceful defiance of laws that negatively impacted the people as a whole. The government, as he describes, is a machine with many wheels, cogs, and levers to represent all of the complex and intertwined components of bureaucracy. While the American system was designed to to run smoothly, the parts sometimes reach complications between each other; while the system is intended to keep the populace’s voice at full volume, “the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized” (Thoreau). The conflicts between groups in the government will sometimes lead to legislation that inherently oppresses a people or their rights. This occurrence, according to Thoreau, is justification for civil disobedience, for “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison”. In some cases it becomes our duty to speak up outside the boundaries set by the law to remind the system that we are people, not wheels, cogs, or