“The American government,-what is it but a tradition, though a recent one,
endeavoring to transmit itself to posterity, but each instant losing some of it’s
integrity? It has not the vitality of a living man; for a single man can bend it to
his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the
less necessary for this; for the people must have some sort of complicated
machinery or other, and hear it’s din, to satisfy that idea of government
which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed
on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.
It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered
any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of it’s way. It does not
keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate.
The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been
accomplished; it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not
sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men
would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when
it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce,
if they were not made of India-rubber, would never manage to bounce over
the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and,
if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not
partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished
with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.”
Henry David Thoreau.
The above was excerpted from Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience”,
and in my opinion should be required reading by everyone in this country,
and for that matter everyone in the world.
Islander.