What type of government commands your respect

The Mexican-American War illustrates this phenomenon. The American government is necessary because "the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Thoreau says that government does not, in fact, achieve that with which we credit it: it does not keep the country free, settle the West, or educate.

Rather, these achievements come from the character of the American people, and they would have been even more successful in these endeavors had government been even less involved. Thoreau also complains about restrictions on trade and commerce. However, Thoreau then says that speaking "practically and as a citizen," he is not asking for the immediate elimination of government. Rather, for the moment, he is asking for a better government. Thoreau argues that by answering to the majority, democracies answer the desires of the strongest group, not the most virtuous or thoughtful.

A government founded on this principle cannot be based on justice. Why can't there be a government where right and wrong are not decided by the majority but by conscience? Thoreau writes, "Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?

Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward. Too much respect for law leads people to do many unjust things, as war illustrates: Soldiers become only a shadow of their humanity; the government shapes them into machines. Soldiers have no opportunity to exercise moral sense, reduced to the existence comparable to that of a horse or dog. Yet these men are often called good citizens. Similarly, most legislators and politicians do not put moral sense first, and those few who do are persecuted as enemies.

Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them.

They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse.

Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?

Documents of Freedom — Civil Discourse and Petitioning. American Portraits — Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau full version. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.