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Henry D. Thoreau's On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience

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In their essays, both Henry D. Thoreau and Martin Luther King express their views of the relationship between the state and the individual and why everyone should have the right to disobey authority. Thoreau, in his seminal essay “Resistance to Civil Government”, better known as “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”, insightfully analyzes the conflicting relationship between the government and the people it governs. Martin Luther King, passionately contends the injustice presented in the unfair treatment of African Americans and the discriminatory attitude that has been present in America.
Henry D. Thoreau is trying to illustrate that the government can and should be better than it is. While Thoreau believed that government is “at best, an expedient,”

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