Civil Disobedience

[ConsAreLiars]

Listening to Mike Webb tonight (a very good show http://stream.mikewebb.org:8000/listen.pls , i visited his website and noticed the link to an online copy of Thoreau's classic: http://eserver.org/thoreau/civil.html

From the intro:
"While Walden can be applied to almost anyone's life, "Civil Disobedience" is like a venerated architectural landmark: it is preserved and admired, and sometimes visited, but for most of us there are not many occasions when it can actually be used. Still, although it is seldom mentioned without references to Gandhi and King, "Civil Disobedience" has more history than many suspect. In the 1940's it was read by the Danish resistance, in the 1950's it was cherished by people who opposed McCarthyism, in the 1960's it was influential in the struggle against South African apartheid, and in the 1970's it was discovered by a new generation of anti-war activists. The lesson learned from all this experience is that Thoreau's ideas really do work, just as he imagined they would."

From the text:
"<5> The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus,(5) etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a hole to keep the wind away,"(6) but leave that office to his dust at least:—

"I am too high-born to be propertied,
To be a secondary at control,
Or useful serving-man and instrument
To any sovereign state throughout the world.""

[MadProphetMargin]

1. I'm feeling pretty disobedient right now...I don't know how CIVIL I feel,

though.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

2. it's one of my favorite reads...along with Waldens Pond and a fine wine

[MadProphetMargin]

3. I didn't like Walden much. He contradicted himself constantly. But

On Civil Disobedience was phenomenal.

[ConsAreLiars]

4. Thoreau reminds us of the best in our heritage

and so offers hope for the future. Not all of America was about the expansion of corporatism. Too much, but not all.

(edit: replace accidentally deleted words)

[Stone_Spirits]

5. kick

:kick:

[MadProphetMargin]

6. Heh. Thoreau was an oddity, even in his day. He was considered

a freak, and if it wasn't for Ralph Waldo Emerson, he would have starved to death.

A thought to consider: America is a vast sea of mediocity, a huge herd of sheep, with only a few freaks and malcontents to justify its existence.