Pros And Cons Of Civil Disobedience

“The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it (Thoreau, 241),” says Thoreau in his opening to “Civil Disobedience.” The American government is just an expedient or the means to an end. We, the American people, have developed a system in which the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. For it is not the government that educates or protects our freedom, but individuals (241). Our government, our system, shows us just how proficient we have become in intruding on our neighbors as well as ourselves, all for our own advantage. This leads us to a state of existence that is not reliant wholly on the self.
“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 (242).” Thoreau depicts the government turning its men into machines, using their bodies for its “greater good.” Through this mechanization, the system steals the right to individual life and personal experience. It is in the name of the government that we must pay give reverence and make our own way (247). Thoreau pushed for men to live as a “counter friction” to the machine (244). It was the idea that if two forces opposed each other with such force, they would eventually wear each other down, smoothing each other’s surfaces, making for compromise. Thoreau urges men not to let their minds be dulled by the “daily grind” of the machine, but to think for