Imagine not having to pay taxes. Many of us dream about what we'd do with that solid chunk of money that gets sent away to the government. We don't exactly know where that solid chunk of our earnings goes. What we do know is that it can't go exactly where we want it to. "I don't support NATO. Why does a whopping twenty percent of my taxes go towards the military? There aren't any fires anymore. I'll hire my own firefighters." What's a person to do? Thoreau says don't pay the taxes if you don't agree with them. However the truth of the matter is, it is one's civil duty to pay taxes.
             Henry David Thoreau was living in America during a period of slavery and the Mexican War, both of which he strongly disapproved of. It crushed him to think that his hard-earned money would be used to buy weapons to kill people, or support a government that approves of slavery. He believed that the only way he could express his dissaproval was to simply not pay the taxes. By this method he was content in the fact that he was in no way approving or funding two issues that his morals conflicted with. Thoreau believed that if one's morals, the very code that they lived by, did not agree with any part of the government's workings it was not only his right, but his duty to disobey and rebel against these workings. He says that man cannot waste away his life serving his country and still live fully and that one should be a man (living by his own morals) before a subject (living by the morals of a government.)
             It can be assumed that any citizen in the whole United States has some issue with the government. Even more importantly, many live with the conscience that their money funds a judgment of our government that their morals do not support. Should all of them refuse to pay taxes as Thoreau preached?
             What would our country be like if society did as Thoreau s
             ...