Civil Disobedience
Thoreau's Disobedience

Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience not only gives a startlingly strong argument against paying one's taxes (which is in itself a difficult task), it also gives a subtle but clear image of Thoreau himself. In this essay, the reader discovers a writer who is at once romantic and cynical, idealistically self-sacrificing and fiercely self-centered, areligious and mystical. It would be tempting to portray Thoreau as inconsistent or somehow duplicitous, but it would be more accurate to recognize him as merely complex.

The romantic in Thoreau comes through clearly when he describes his experience in jail, where "It was like traveling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night... It was to see my native village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before…...

Civil Disobedience
The Trial of Socrates

The Athenians suffered a crushing defeat in 404 B.C.E. with the end of the Peloponnesian ar. A Spartan occupation force controlled the city, and instituted the rule of the Thirty Tyrants to replace Athenian democracy. hile a form of democracy was reinstated it lacked the acceptance of ideas and freedom of speech that had been such an integral part of Athenian society (Rogers).

In Athens at this time it was the practice of private citizens to bring accusations of unlawful behavior to the attention of government officials. In 399 B.C.E. Socrates was charged with impiety by Meletus, a poet. Laws against impiety were wide-ranging so the charges had to be specified. The indictment against him reads "Socrates is guilty of refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state and introducing other, new divinities. He is also guilty of corrupting the youth. The penalty demanded is death"…...

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Works Cited

Frick, Robert. "Gandhi's Principles of Satyagraha." Satyagraha. (ND). 22 February 2012.

King, Martin Luther. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." African Studies Center-University of Pennsylvania.. 16 April 1963. 22 February 2012.

McElroy, Windy. "Henery Thoreau and 'Civil Disobedience'." Future of the Freedom Foundation. In The Thoreau Reader. (2005). 22 February 2012.

John Locke's social theory not only permits disobedience but also a revolution if the State violates its side of the contract. Martin Luther King, Jr. says that civil disobedience derives from the natural law tradition in that an unjust law is not a law but a perversion of it. He, therefore, sees consenting to obey laws as not extending or including unjust laws.
At present, a new and different form of civil disobedience has developed with the invention of computer technology (Wray 1996). The Critical Art Ensemble's Electronic civil disobedience enables one to travel back to the historic periods of civil disobedience in the U.S. And how it developed through the years. The full potential of electronic civil disobedience has not been explored as a tool in effecting political change. The common opinion or view is that electronic civil disobedience will be go in the same direction. With more and…...

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Bibliography

Maravillosa, S. (2002). On the Importance of Civil Disobedience. Doing Freedom Magazine. http://www.doingfreedom.com/gen/1002/civdis.html

Suber, P. (1999). Civil Disobedience. Philosophy of Law: an Encyclopedia: Garland Publications, Company. II 110-113.  http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/civ-dis.htm 

Thoreau, HD (2001). Civil Disobedience. Berkeley Digital Library Sunsite.  http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Thoreau/CivilDisobedience.html 

Wikipedia. (2005). Civil Disobedience. Media Wiki.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience

Civil Disobedience:
Thoreau's research on civil disobedience puts it as the refusal by the citizens to obey laws or even pay taxes in a country. The end result of the disobedience is normally war, especially when the citizens want to take laws into their hands. The decision by citizens to take the law into their hands forces the government to act forcefully, which results in the war. However, when proper procedures are implemented by the citizens the government takes its course by practicing justice. In countries where citizens work together with the government, their system of ruling becomes excellent and the citizens enjoy their freedom. An example of a state where justice is seen to be practiced is in the United States where the introduction of the right to rebellion brought changes.

Thoreau's main point is that for a better government that upholds and practices justice to the fullest, its rights should…...

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Works Cited:

"Civil Disobedience." SparkNotes. SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2012. .

"Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" Summary and Analysis." Thoreau, Emerson, and Transcendentalism: Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience": Summary and Analysis. Cliffs Notes, n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2012. .

Pharisaical practices are as popular today as they may be supposed to have been in the time of Christ -- and one of the biggest hypocrisies of our time is what Roosevelt called "the great arsenal of democracy," the shield-phrase with which the U.S. would pursue its policy of "manifest destiny" all over the globe (and an ideology it had been pursuing since the end of the 19th century when a Republican hite House paved the way for all Street to start directing foreign policy) (Jarecki 41). The amount of government waste that is poured into overseas wars in the Middle East would today have Thoreau off in the woods again, lamenting his heart out like a prophet of old. The same callousness with which our government devalues human life for the sake of profit is what Thoreau opposed in "Civil Disobedience": as he himself states, "I quarrel not with…...

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Works Cited

Jarecki, Eugene. The American Way of War. New York, NY: Free Press, 2008. Print.

Lenat, Richard. "Thoreau Reader." 2009. Web. 9 Aug 2011.

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-

Regardless, to condemn Brown to death in Thoreau's view demoted the far greater human destruction of life via the institution of enslavement Brown attempted to end. This does not seem so much to be a contradiction or a defense of violence but a tempering of the anger that Brown created in the hearts of many Americans, and an attempt to put the violent acts of Brown in the context of the equally violent actions of slavery.
Perhaps the main contradiction between Thoreau is not his praise of Brown and his advocating of his own pacifist, resistance to the Mexican ar, and the value of civil disobedience, but his condemnation of slavery and praise of populism and a lack of government authority in "Civil Disobedience." The latter work's expressed defense of the popular sentiment as unilaterally guiding the government's will would not have ended slavery in the South. To follow this…...

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Works Cited

Civil Disobedience." Prentice Hall Literature Georgia Student

Edition. Pp. 412-413.

Wood, Barry. "Thoreau's Narrative Art in Civil Disobedience." Modern Critical Views on Henry David Thoreau. Edited by Harold Bloom. Pp.173-174

Yarborough, Wynn. "Readings of Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government" Virginia Commonwealth University, 1995.

Civil Disobedience
he concept of "Civil Disobedience" was first put forward by the American author, Henry David horeau in his famous essay "Civil Disobedience" initially published in 1849 as "Resistance to Civil Government." Although horeau's essay had little impact in the nineteenth century, his ideas about civil disobedience were put into practice in the twentieth century by leaders such as Mohandas Ghandhi during India's struggle for independence and by Martin Luther King Jr. In the Civil Rights movement by the American blacks.

he concept of "Civil Disobedience" before 1900 was the same as it is now since it has been mainly derived from horeau's initial concept. It usually refers to refusal to obey civil laws and decrees through passive resistance. People who choose to practice civil disobedience deliberately break a law, which they consider as unjust, to bring attention to the injustice. he goal of a civil disobedience act or movement is…...

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The concept of "Civil Disobedience" before 1900 was the same as it is now since it has been mainly derived from Thoreau's initial concept. It usually refers to refusal to obey civil laws and decrees through passive resistance. People who choose to practice civil disobedience deliberately break a law, which they consider as unjust, to bring attention to the injustice. The goal of a civil disobedience act or movement is to get the unjust law amended or repealed and the people practicing it are willing to go to jail or suffer in other ways for their objectives.

Thoreau believed that the individual was a higher and independent power and the state obtained its legitimate power and authority from the individual. He exhorted the people to resist unjust laws especially if they require a person to be the agent of injustice to another. He believed that if a person is truly in the right, then God is on his side and he constitutes "a majority of one."

As mentioned earlier, most famous civil disobedience movements were conducted in the twentieth century. However, in the pre-1900 period, Thoreau himself practiced "Civil Disobedience" by not paying his poll-tax. He did so as he was opposed to several government policies at the time such as the continuing practice of slavery and the Mexican War (1846-48) that he considered as unjust and the work of a few people using the standing government as a tool.

3). For both Thoreau and King, the matter of unjust laws was urgent. In his speech delivered during the March on ashington, King stated, "It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality," ("I Have a Dream"). A century earlier, Thoreau advocated the expedient breaking of an unjust law. Of unjust laws Thoreau stated, "if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law," ("Civil Disobedience" Part 2, para. 5).
King draws directly from Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," pointing out the urgency to break unjust laws in order to transform the very ethical foundations of the society. "And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro…...

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Works Cited

King, Martin Luther. "I Have a Dream" Speech transcript available online at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

Lenat, Richard. Thoreau Reader. Retrieved online 3 Aug 2010 from http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html

McElroy, Wendy. "Henry Thoreau and 'Civil Disobedience'" Thoreau Reader. Retrieved 3 Aug 2010 from http://thoreau.eserver.org/wendy.html

Thoreau, Henry David. "Civil Disobedience." Text online retrieved 3 Aug 2010 from http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html

I support the idea of sousveillance. I consider surveillance irrational; and sousveillance (being equally but more deliberately; humorously and ironically irrational, in imitating and mirroring surveillance) a valid protest. In my view, purveyors of hierarchal surveillance keep power by falsely convincing us they protect average peoples' interests. The opposite is true. Power for its own sake is nowhere among Aristotle's 'human virtues'. Sousveillance in fact reveals non-virtue in operation by challenging someone's assumed worthiness of power and influence when such people's typically human, often less-than-virtuous behavior is shown.
In today's popular culture, power often falsely equates to virtue. Therefore many will unthinkingly 'follow the leader' [trust blindly]; become 'team players' [never question authority]; 'support the troops' [cheer on America at war, no matter what]; act 'patriotic' [act like a Republican]. This is coercion, not leadership; and coercion leading to peer-pressurized 'group-think' is not virtuous, nor is it rational or the…...

Both the British Empire and the American South shared a prejudicial view of minorities. Both set themselves up as superior to those who were forced to obey their laws, and believed that their citizens were inferior due to their race.

Rosa Parks is now known as "the mother of the civil rights movement." Her actions began a series of events which ended much of the inequality faced by African-Americans in the South. Like Gandhi, she took down her oppressors. She thought this of herself, "I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and posterity for all people."

Both Rosa Parks and Gandhi's actions caused significant changes in the social order of the regions which they lived. However, the civil rights movement in the South, despite its successes, has not achieved the monumental success seen in the case of Gandhi. He successfully got…...

MLK
Martin Luther King penned his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" precisely because his peers in the religious community had criticized his acts of civil disobedience. The letter is a rhetorical argument, rooted in Aristotelian rhetorical strategies. King also relies on a tone that emotionally charged yet rational at the same time, avoiding hyperbole and sarcasm or anything else that would put off his readers. Although King's strategies proved ultimately effective at promoting the cause for Civil Rights, and although King has become enshrined as an American hero, there were and still are still criticisms of King's work. As Marcus Epstein notes, " during the 50s and 60s, the Right almost unanimously opposed the civil rights movement." Critics of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came from two polar opposite sides of politics in America. On the one side were the ignorant bigots who did not see how damaging institutionalized racism had become…...

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Works Cited

Epstein, Marcus. "Myths of Martin Luther King." Retrieved online:  http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/epstein9.html 

King, Dr. Martin Luther. "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Retrieved online:  http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html 

Staples, Brent. "Just Walk on By." Retrieved online:

Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience"
Henry David Thoreau's essay on "Civil Disobedience" inspired many leaders, spanning from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr., to use nonviolent resistance to enact change. King wrote: "I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau" ("Civil Disobedience," Introduction). In the case of Thoreau, the Transcendentalist author of alden refused to pay taxes to support what he considered to be an unjust conflict, the Mexican-American ar. However, in his essay, Thoreau's argument has far greater implications than a single war, and instead he argues that all forms of collective representation including democratic ones are fundamentally less just and valid than the individual conscience. " This American government -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring…...

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Works Cited

Thoreau, Henry David. "Civil Disobedience." E-text. 7 Nov 2012

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

Rosenwald, Lawrence. "The Theory, Practice & Influence of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience."

From William Cain, ed., The Oxford Historical Companion to Thoreau. 7 Nov 2012.

civil disobedience in America. The writer discusses the history of civil disobedience in America and compares it to the current use regarding the war with Iraq. The writer explores several aspects of civil disobedience and how it has changed because of the technological ability currently available. There were five sources used to complete this paper.
The use of civil disobedience in America is a traditional as apple pie. From the inception of this nation residents have used civil disobedience to voice their displeasure at government decisions and government actions. The use of civil disobedience is a right that is protected by the United States constitution. At one time civil disobedience was the only want that attention could be brought to an issue that bothered a group of residents. The television was not invented and the newspapers remained sadly local in their distribution. The gathering and participation of large numbers could…...

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REFERENCES

Mendoza, Martha. Activists planning mass civil disobedience if U.S. attacks Iraq. (2003). AP National Press

AFCS Why Civil Disobedience? (accessed 4-14-2003)

 http://www.afsc.org/iraq/whycd.shtm 

Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience (accessed 4-14-2003)

.. power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. y the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal" ("Martin Luther King's Letter,' Internet). Dr. King's first point concerns unjust laws that appear to have been created to serve the needs of "power groups" at the expense of powerless groups, such as tax breaks on the federal Inheritance Tax which benefits the wealthy. His second point concerns just laws that were created to serve the needs of all citizens and which are obeyed by everyone regardless of social standing, such as laws forbidding murder. In essence, Dr. King is advocating civil unrest against those laws which he sees as unjust.
In contrast to Dr. King's views on…...

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Bibliography

Berman, Robert. "Plato's Crito: Text Outline." Internet. 2006. Retrieved at http://webusers.xula.edu/rberman/Crito.htm.

Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail." Internet. 2006. Retrieved at http://almaz.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html.

It is an evangelical attempt, generally, to right some wrong or to gain some sort of justice. Examples of social movements include the equal rights movement, the women's movement, and the green movement. While the public is, by far, not completely enraptured by these movements, they tend to engage the action of elites, specialized members of the population, and at least a moderate amount of the general public. They also receive a great deal of attention in academic circles, for the most part. Because the social movement engages the public, however, a component on which the civil society and democracy relies, can they increase or encourage democratization?
Arato and Cohen suggest this is true by discussing the traditional model of the society against the state, among other components. The idea that the society rebels against the state echoes the tradition or rebellion that has traditionally attempted to install democratic rule.…...

Gandhi is one of the most fascinating people in all of recent history.  An advocate of passive resistance, he not only helped free India from British oppression, but also inspired the 1960s Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King, Jr.  Gandhi’s work is so well-known that his name has become synonymous with both peace and leadership.  However, his personal life was marred by some controversies, suggesting that even great men can have terrible flaws.  We cannot possibly tell you all about Gandhi in a few paragraphs; his life and his life’s work....

Title: Navigating the Crossroads of Authority: Exploring the Legitimacy and Limits of Power in Political Theory

Introduction:
At the crux of political theory lies the intricate interplay between authority and power, a dynamic relationship that has sparked debates and shaped paradigms for centuries. This essay delves into the multifaceted concept of legitimacy, interrogating the foundations of authority and the boundaries of power. Through a comprehensive analysis of historical and contemporary perspectives, we will explore the challenges and complexities of legitimizing power, the tensions between various sources of authority, and the implications for political practice and social justice.

1. The Sources and Foundations of....

Outline for an Essay on the Boston Tea Party

I. Introduction
A. Hook: Begin with a captivating fact or anecdote about the Boston Tea Party.
B. Background: Provide a brief context about the American Revolution and the tensions between the colonies and Great Britain.
C. Thesis statement: State the main argument of the essay, e.g., "The Boston Tea Party was a pivotal event in the American Revolution, igniting widespread protests and ultimately leading to the Declaration of Independence."

II. Causes of the Boston Tea Party
A. The Tea Act and its impact: Explain the provisions of the Tea Act and how it....

I. Introduction
A. Brief explanation of protests as a form of activism
B. Thesis statement: Protests serve as a powerful tool for advocating social, political, and economic change.

II. Historical Context of Protests
A. Overview of significant protests throughout history
1. Civil rights movement in the United States
2. Anti-apartheid movement in South Africa
3. Women's suffrage movement
B. The impact of these protests on society

III. Types of Protests
A. Peaceful demonstrations and marches
1. Examples of successful peaceful protests
a. Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington
b. Gandhi's Salt March in India
2. Benefits of peaceful protests
B. Civil....