Civil Disobedience
It is simple to say that Henry David Thoreau's essay, "CivilDisobedience," influenced two of the most well known political figures ofthe past hundred years, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It mightbe less easy to connect Thoreau's ideas with those of more flamboyant-andone might also propose less wildly successful-political reformers such asPhilip Berrigan. Yet that connection can be made, and moreover, it can bemade in a way few students of Thoreau might have considered. Perhaps fewcommentators on the lives and work of Gandhi, King and Berrigan would havethought of it either. And yet, in the post-feminist age, the age of a new'masculinism,' Thoreau can be proposed as the intellectual forebear of a'new masculinism,' one that forswears guns and violence in favor of passiveresistance of the sort carried out by Gandhi, King and Berrigan. Interestingly, Thoreau was one of a group of New Englandtranscendentalists that included Emerson and the Alcott family, whosedaughter Louisa May, produced the well loved but rarely critiqued LittleWomen. Also included in the group were novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne andpoet Walt Whitman, as well as abolitionist Frederick Douglass. It was the
Q: Why' Berrigan: Because the only way you can get at the state is by dealing with its laws. News and World Report: . Here is a brief part of a transcriptof the beginning of a 1996 interview with Philip Berrigan written byProgressive editor Matthew Rothschild: Q: How many times have you been arrested' Philip Berrigan: I don't know, well over a hundred, I guess. ) In fact, commentators noted thatThoreau was fascinated with political and economic issues related to hisstrong belief in self-reliance and individualism, but rather then bearingarms, he "used his essays to critique government and community suppressionof individual liberty" as well as to persuade readers to embrace other life-affirming stances, such as opposition to slavery and resistance to badbehavior by government or its officials. I am convinced that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available" (Revolt Without Violence, 1960, p. The principles themselves were developed bywell-educated people, such as Emerson, who was a Harvard graduate, and hadbegun to read Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, basically unknown in theUnited States until then. Thoreau wrote: Why has every man a conscience, then' I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. " (Weidhorn 1995) WhatRobinson accomplished displays the visibly Gandhi's observations that civilbehavior, too, is an "expression of the spirit of non-violence" while"incivility . (Zinn 2003) Philip Berrigan diedafter a short, intense bout with cancer in 2002, but even a year after hisdeath, interviews with him were being reprinted in so-called left wingpublications such as The Progressive. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
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Acceptance Essays
