Examples Of Individualism In Civil Disobedience

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Civil Disobedience: The Classic that It Is “Government is best which governs least.” This single quote is the most important line of the essay, and defines why this essay is a classic.“Civil Disobedience,” by Henry David Thoreau, is Thoreau’s viewpoint on the issues that faced the nation as a whole including the size of the government, on-going wars, and human rights. These problems though are not just facing the nation during his lifetime, but also our life. Thoreau is considered a classic author due to his work in the transcendentalist movement, and his words in “Civil Disobedience” through the style of the essay and the themes of individualism along with calls for a smaller government. Born on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, Thoreau …show more content…

In his essay, he states that if a person does not agree with the rules and regulations of a law that they should “break the law.” (Thoreau 98). When a person goes against something they don’t agree with, they are using their conscience to make things right for themselves. He also states that it goes against the right of nature to force someone to think a certain is correct and just even though they simply don’t agree to it. This leads then to the person’s duty to break the law for the right of limited government and in a nonviolent way. (Parel, 424) A perfect example of a nonviolence protest was when Thoreau was sent to jail. It first started out when Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax, a type of taxation that had to be paid to vote in election, to the government since the American bureaucracy still supported the idea of slavery while he was an abolitionist. He believed that all lives mattered and that everyone should be treated with respect and dignity. Anyways, since he violated federal law which states that voting citizens need to pay their poll tax, he ended up going to jail. He was let go when someone, thought to have been Emerson, finally paid his taxes the following day (Thoreau 105). Thoreau testified against the government and broke away from the ways of society to form his own way of

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