Civil Disobediance by Henry David Thoreau (1849)

[ellisonz]

Poll question: Civil Disobediance by Henry David Thoreau (1849)

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) (pronounced like the word thorough, with emphasis on the first syllable)<1><2> was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

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Thoreau needed to concentrate and get himself working more on his writing. In March 1845, Ellery Channing told Thoreau, "Go out upon that, build yourself a hut, & there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no other alternative, no other hope for you."<32> Two months later, Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845, when he moved to a small, self-built house on land owned by Emerson in a second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond. The house was in "a pretty pasture and woodlot" of 14 acres (57,000 m2) that Emerson had bought,<33> 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from his family home.<34>

On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the Mexican-American War and slavery, and he spent a night in jail because of this refusal. (The next day Thoreau was freed, against his wishes, when his aunt paid his taxes.<35>) The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau. In January and February 1848, he delivered lectures on "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government"<36> explaining his tax resistance at the Concord Lyceum. Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26:

Heard Thoreau's lecture before the Lyceum on the relation of the individual to the State– an admirable statement of the rights of the individual to self-government, and an attentive audience. His allusions to the Mexican War, to Mr. Hoar's expulsion from Carolina, his own imprisonment in Concord Jail for refusal to pay his tax, Mr. Hoar's payment of mine when taken to prison for a similar refusal, were all pertinent, well considered, and reasoned. I took great pleasure in this deed of Thoreau's.
—Bronson Alcott, Journals (1938)<37>

Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay entitled Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience). In May 1849 it was published by Elizabeth Peabody in the Aesthetic Papers. Thoreau had taken up a version of Percy Shelley's principle in the political poem The Mask of Anarchy (1819), that Shelley begins with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time – and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action.<38>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau#Civil_Disobedience_and_the_Walden_years:_1845.E2.80.931849

Full Text Available: http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html

[ellisonz]

1. Kick.

[FirstLight]

2. I have a copy of walden, and love it

but i have not read civil disobedience - YET... now i want to go look for an online version... :)

[ellisonz]

3. Blam.

http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html ;)

[H2O Man]

4. I've read it,

several times.

And I named my pond "Thoreau."

[ellisonz]

5. Cool

Have you made appropriate signage? (pics?)

[H2O Man]

7. Here it is:

Our sweat lodge is back in the trees. Numerous benches, bird-feeders, and a small cabin on the other side. Also the fire-pit, seen below:

[ellisonz]

8. Beautiful.

I am going to jigger the mule to the carriage and be over within the next fortnight! ;)

[H2O Man]

10. Any time!

It's a great place to sit and think, and/or talk.

[ellisonz]

11. DU Teach-in at H20 Man's!

:toast:

[FirstLight]

6. hmmm...that's an interesting thought...re;taxes

I happened to find a copy of Civil Disobedience online here:http://art-bin.com/art/odisob.html

and i have to say, what about this idea, NOT paying into a treasury that seeks to fund war, corporatism or the like?
if the 99% all chose to tell the fed to fuck themselves when April 15th came, would that send a clear message?

since they refuse to raise taxes on the 1% and choose instead to make US foot the bill for their wrongdoings...it could be a good start


"If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now."

[ellisonz]

9. And there is a key distinction from what the "libertarian/corporatists" demand...

<3> But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men,(4) I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

[ellisonz]

12. And a final kick...

:kick: