FCLLI6_civil_disobedience

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Civil Disobedience 
 
 "Civil Disobedience" was Thoreau’s response to his 1846 imprisonment for 
refusing to pay a poll tax that violated his conscience. He exclaimed in 
"Civil Disobedience," 
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 
that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to 
cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only 
obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think 
right. 
 
 Imprisonment was Thoreau’s first direct experience with state power 
and, in typical fashion, he analyzed it: 
 
The State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or 
moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or 
honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I 
will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. 
 
 The opening sentence of "Civil Disobedience" sets the tone by 
paraphrasing the motto of The United States Magazine and Democratic 
Review – “That government is best which governs least.” Then Thoreau 
carries this logic one step further: 
Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, – “That 
government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared 
for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. 
Government is at best but an expedient.... 
 
 
 
 After what appears to be a call for anarchism, Thoreau pulls back and 
dissociates himself from “no-government men.” Speaking in practical 
terms and “as a citizen,” he states, “I ask for, not at once no government, 
but at once a better government.” 
 
 Whatever his position on government, one point is clear: Thoreau 
denies the right of any government to automatic and unthinking 
obedience. Obedience should be earned and it should be withheld from an 
unjust government. To drive this point home, "Civil Disobedience" dwells 
on how the Founding Fathers rebelled against an unjust government, 
which raises the question of when rebellion is justified. 
 To answer, Thoreau compares government to a machine and the 
problems of government to “friction.” Friction is normal to a machine so 
that its mere presence cannot justify revolution. But open rebellion does 
become justified in two cases: first, when the friction comes to have its 
own machine, that is, when the injustice is no longer occasional but a 
major characteristic; and, second, when the machine demands that 
people cooperate with injustice. Thoreau declared that, if the 
government requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I 
say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the 
machine. 
 This is the key to Thoreau’s political philosophy. The individual is the 
final judge of right and wrong. More than this, since only individuals act, 
only individuals can act unjustly. When the government knocks on the 
door, it is an individual in the form of a postman or tax collector whose 
hand hits the wood. Before Thoreau’s imprisonment, when a confused 
taxman had wondered aloud about how to handle his refusal to pay, 
Thoreau had advised, “Resign.” If a man chose to be an agent of injustice, 
then Thoreau insisted on confronting him with the fact that he was 
making a choice. As Thoreau explained, 
[It] is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel, – and he 
has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. 
 
 
 
 But if government is “the voice of the people,” as it is often called, 
shouldn’t that voice be heeded? Thoreau admits that government may 
express the will of the majority but it may also express nothing more than 
the will of elite politicians. Even a good form of government is “liable to 
be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.” Moreover, 
even if a government did express the voice of the people, this fact would 
not compel the obedience of individuals who disagree with what is being 
said. The majority may be powerful but it is not necessarily right. What, 
then, is the proper relationship between the individual and the 
government? 
 Perhaps the best description of Thoreau’s ideal relationship occurs in his 
description of “a really free and enlightened State” that recognizes “the 
individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own 
power and authority are derived.” It is a state that “can afford to be just 
to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor,” 
allowing those who did not embrace it to live “aloof.”