![]() ![]() Thoreau believes that participating in civil disobedience to bring about meaningful change is a basic moral requirement for anyone with a conscience. Thoreau therefore argues that civil disobedience is the only way to reform America, because it allows citizens to maintain distance from the government while also working to improve that government. ![]() He argues that this is because working closely with the state as one tries to rebuild a more just version of that state can never really succeed people will be too dependent on the state to succeed in dismantling it. While Thoreau admits that there are other channels for change, such as voting and petitioning the state, he believes that those channels can’t fundamentally change how the government operates. ![]() He suggests that people should not enrich the nation by paying taxes when the government is using that wealth for deplorable actions that is, withholding funds will limit the state’s ability to do harm. Refusing to pay taxes is one of the main acts of civil disobedience-a citizen’s non-violent refusal to obey a government’s laws or demands-that Thoreau encourages. As the title of “Civil Disobedience” suggests, Henry David Thoreau advocates for disobeying the government when it promotes immoral actions (such as slavery or the Mexican-American war), and he attempts to persuade his fellow Americans to pursue justice through such disobedience. ![]()
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