On Civil Disobedience
By Shane Timson
For High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club, I'm Shane Timson in Colby, Kansas.
Today we are going to discuss Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. I chose this interesting book because we live in a world today where we disagree with the government and what it does; people take to the streets and protest, but they get violent.
For example, on President Trump's first inauguration, there were people setting cars on fire because they didn't agree that he should be the president. Some people say that later on when President Trump lost, then the January 6th stuff came. And again, a form of protest, because they didn't like the outcome. Well, I'm not here to debate those things, but let's look at what Henry David Thoreau talks about in his book civil disobedience, knowing that this is a man who didn't agree with a lot of government.
Now, let's point out that Thoreau is not against government, but he said it should be very limited in what it does, like the people should be free to live the way they want to live, much like he did. Thoreau spent two years in a cabin deep in the woods, to which he felt that he didn't have to pay taxes because he was not utilizing the government.
For example, he says in the book that he has no problem paying the highway tax because he uses the highway. But he shouldn't have to pay for something he doesn’t use. So, if we put that in modern terms, okay, I use the streets in my town so I should pay taxes to make sure those streets are good.
But if I do not utilize, say the college, why should I have to pay for the college that I don't use? That would be Thoreau’s argument there. He says, I don't want to be forced to belong to a state pay for what you need and then don't have to pay for the rest.
He also suggests that if you want to abolish being forced to pay income taxes, he says, if everybody would just simply stop paying their income taxes, that would go away because they wouldn't be able to arrest everybody.
Well, that is Thoreau's view, not my view. But I think that it is an interesting thing that even Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the Bible used a form of civil disobedience when they were told that they had to bow down to the statue of king Nebuchadnezzar, they said no, because they were following the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before you.” They said, if the punishment is to burn in this fiery furnace, we'd rather burn than disobey God. They did not go and rip the statue of Nebuchadnezzar down. They didn't try to cause a riot; they just simply dealt with the issue at hand. They, of course, were thrown in the fiery furnace, but God saved them. They did not burn.
I do think that Thoreau is a very interesting character, even in modern times, this book has been utilized by a lot of people. Gandhi used this book. And even Martin Luther King had been said to quote from parts of this book from time to time. It is still something that people utilize and read, and I think it's worth the read. It's a short read, but we should read it.
