Thoreau Vs Mlk JrEssay title: Thoreau Vs Mlk JrThere are times throughout the history of the United States when its citizens have felt the need to revolt against the government. There were such cases during the time of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau, when there was unfair discrimination against the Afro-American community and Americans refusing to pay poll taxes to support the Mexican War. They used civil disobedience to eventually get legislation to stop the injustice brought against them and their nation. Civil disobedience is defined as refusal to obey civil laws or decrees, which usually takes the form of passive resistance. People practicing civil disobedience break a law because they consider the law unjust, and want to call attention to its injustice, hoping to bring about its withdrawal.
Thoreau Vs Mlk JrThere are times throughout the history of the United States when its citizens have felt the need to revolt against the government. There were such cases during the time of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau, when there was unfair discrimination against the Afro-American community and Americans refusing to pay poll taxes to support the Mexican War. They used civil disobedience to eventually get legislation to stop the injustice brought against them and their nation. Civil disobedience is defined as refusal to obey civil laws or decrees, which usually takes the form of passive resistance. People practicing civil disobedience break a law because they consider the law unjust, and want to call attention to its injustice, hoping to bring about its withdrawal.
Thoreau Vs Mlk JrThere are times throughout the history of the United States when its citizens have felt the need to revolt against the government. There were such cases during the time of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau, when there was unfair discrimination against the Afro-American community and Americans refusing to pay poll taxes to support the Mexican War. They used civil disobedience to eventually get legislation to stop the injustice brought against them and their society. Civil disobedience is defined as refusal to obey civil laws or decrees, which usually takes the form of passive resistance. People practicing civil disobedience break a law because they consider the law unjust, and want to call attention to its injustice, hoping to bring about its withdrawal.
Thoreau Vs Mlk JrThere are times throughout the history of the United States when its citizens have felt the need to revolt against the government. There were such cases during the time of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau, when there was unfair discrimination against the Afro-American community and Americans refusing to pay poll taxes to support the Mexican War. They used civil disobedience to eventually get legislation to stop the injustice brought against them and their nation. Civil disobedience is defined as refusal to obey civil laws or decrees, which usually takes the form of passive resistance. People practicing civil disobedience break a law because they consider the law unjust, and want to call attention to its injustice, hoping to bring about its withdrawal.
Thoreau Vs Mlk JrThere are times throughout the history of the United States when its citizens have felt the need to revolt against the government. There were such cases during the time of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau, when there was unfair discrimination against the Afro-American community and Americans refusing to pay poll taxes to support the Mexican War. They used civil disobedience to eventually get legislation to stop the injustice brought against them and their society. Civil disobedience is defined as refusal to obey civil laws or decrees, which usually takes the form of passive resistance. People practicing civil disobedience break a law because they consider the law unjust, and want to call attention to its injustice, hoping to bring about its withdrawal.
Thoreau wrote “Civil Disobedience” in 1849 after spending a night in the Walden town jail for refusing to pay a poll tax that supported the Mexican War. He recommended passive resistance as a form of tension that could lead to reform of unjust laws practiced by the government. He voiced civil disobedience as “An expression of the individuals liberty to create change” (Thoreau 530). Thoreau felt that the government had established order that resisted reform and change. “Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary” (Thoreau 531).
Thoreau refused to pay the poll tax because the money was being used to finance the Mexican War. Not only was Thoreau against the war itself but the war was over Texas which was to be used as a slave state. His friend Staples offered to pay the tax for him, but to Thoreau it wasnt the tax he was objected to, it was how the money would be used. He believed strongly against paying money to a war he did not support, and would rather end up in jail than go against his will. A certain passage shows how strong he felt when he said “Your money is your life, why should I haste to give it my money?” (Thoreau 538). It was important to Thoreau to get the public informed about the War, and make people think why it was wrong to support it. Thoreau didnt rally hundreds and thousands of people together to get reactions. Instead he went to jail to protest and wrote his essay “Civil Disobedience”. His statements were to get people to think and take their own approach to the situation.
The Civil War was actually about taking back Texas. Tl;dr: Thoreau’s War didn’t take down Texas.
The Civil War broke the “Texans were to suffer but to save them” narrative.
This is a basic point I get from many social and religious reformers (and many other conservative conservative writers). It should also be emphasized that there aren’t nearly enough “saved” Texans in the US to actually do what the US does over most of a 50 year period. Texas is over a third of the country’s population and the state has roughly 16% of the U.S. population. The state of Texas has the largest prison population. This means that, while the US would have 5 million people in jail for any given year (and the population in the US would have to increase from 1 million to 9 million for that same year) the population of Texas has roughly the same number of people in prison as the US (1.07 million for every 1 million people). It is true that the US was far less free during this year (4 million Americans who would have been incarcerated had the war been still in force, but not for a long time, even 20 years) but in fact it grew.
What really drove Texans to keep opposing the war with Thoreau was the fear of punishment. The fear of imprisonment in Texas, which they believed to be absolute torture, was driving people away from their homes and the streets. It pushed the US government to pay money directly to Texas to pay for this crime and keep its populace under state control while it continues to do nothing in the legal sense of the word. The only way to stop this was to end the US government having to pay for our own wars, which is one of the best strategies to stop the state from paying our own taxes, but this is just another example of a great many people believing that money in politics is a form of political expression. The fear of imprisonment was the thing behind the desire that the US government paid for these wars.
Thoreau was never really an advocate of social justice. In fact he would not even consider giving a speech on political causes. He was a more radical thinker at the time than his friend, who was probably one of the best thinkers of the time. Nevertheless he still used his political knowledge to fight crime and he was not one of those political prisoners who went through some “revolutions” in the 1960’s which were actually peaceful reforms in which the politicians fought for control of government. Instead he was someone who was not against war as he was against war. His fear of punishment was a major factor motivating people to go after the war because of Thoreau.
By the end of the 1960’s, in the 80’s and early 90’s the people really moved into the political arena. The Texas state legislature was passing some bills on how to handle the country that many Americans were not aware of. One of the major causes in the 1980’s was the legalization of small businesses and led to the creation of big business. In 1984 the House of Representatives passed and Senate of the same bill called a Tax on Political Protest and also banned political expression at the state level. Many Texans were against government giving tax money to political parties in general, and as much as I might like to believe that Thoreau was pro free speech laws, I don’t think he was.
A few years ago, a young conservative activist named Bill Schulz wrote a book for the Leftwing Institute which was kind of his own personal project and he had it published in the end of 2001. It states that Schulz “in one article claimed that “free speech is a matter of economic necessity. In reality, free speech
Many years after Thereaus “Civil Disobedience”,