Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau may be most known for his lonely stint at WaldenPond, but he also wrote many essays commenting on his times. He wrote"Civil Disobedience" in 1849, and it is quite clear the essay has had astrong influence on a wide variety of politicians and leaders. First, thedefinition of civil disobedience must be explored. One writer called civildisobedience "A paradigm case of civil disobedience is an action that isconscientious and illegal but also both non-violent and 'public'--which isto say, for one, that the civil disobedient accepts some societalpunishment for breaking the law" (Meyer 69). Thus, civil disobedience isusually a public action that is non-violent, but gauged to involve thepublic, so they understand just what the reason is for the disobedience inthe first place. For example, an act of civil disobedience today could bean act such as the people who moved into tree houses in old growth forests,which kept logging companies from cutting down some of the oldest trees inthe forest. The action became quite public, eventually saved the trees,and was a non-violent gesture against the lumber companies and theirpractices. This is an example of civil dis
Thoreau influenced Gandhi, and subsequently Gandhi had a profound influenceon Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, many have called it the"textbook" of civil disobedience, as this writer does. "This characterization displays oneconnection between civility and civil disobedience suggested by MahatmaGandhi's observation that civility is an 'expression of the spirit of non-violence' whereas 'incivility . Gandhi's experiences were similar to King's, in that he had to makethe government and the public aware of the plight of the poverty-strickenHindus in his country, and so he used forms of non-violent protest to bringattention to the wrongs against his people. Thus, even today,we do not enjoy a "really free and enlightened State," because there arestill injustices between the government and the people, and the governmenthas evolved into a powerful entity that takes most of its lead frompowerful special interest groups and businesses. Thus, the people arestill not being treated "accordingly," and still have to fight for theirrights and their freedoms. and Mahatma Gandhi were both treatedas enemies of the state at times, and both served time in jail for theirbeliefs. It was Gandhi's textbook for his civil disobedience campaign in India, was published as a handbook of political action in the early days of the British Labour party in England, and was a manual of arms for the resistance movement under Nazi occupation in Europe in the 1940's. It is clearthat King attempted to bridge civil disobedience with civic approval, andtried to gain civil rights for blacks across America by blending civildisorder with moral understanding. Both Gandhi and King used non-violent protest as a means to bringattention to their problems, and both men based their protests on thetenets Thoreau created over 100 years before. Thoreau believes civildisobedience is as much a basic right as is freedom of speech or religion,and he believes it is necessary to keep the government active and cognizantto the needs of the citizens it serves. He states, "Law nevermade men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even thewell-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice" (Thoreau 48). "Indeed in the wakeof Martin Luther King Jr. 's politicization (via Gandhi) of Thoreau'steaching on civil disobedience-transforming a markedly apolitical stanceinto a tool of mass mobilization and direct action--Thoreau would seem tohave been accepted into the democratic fold" (Schaub 201). One writer states, "In short, thecivil disobedient tends to be an engaged participant in the practice of thepublic evaluation of the law" (Meyer 69).
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