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Henry David Thoreau's Fight Against Laws

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Throughout history mankind has had thriving civilizations and prosperous governments - such as the Roman Empire, Scandinavia, and many others - and yet every single one of these great societies have fallen at one point or another due to varying reasons, but all relating to the unrest of the governed people. These citizens of the world had grown to disapprove of the way that their governments had made laws that restricted their everyday lives. To voice their opinions, they resisted - although it was treasonous in almost every country in man's history - against the laws that they did not agree with and engaged in a form of non-violent, and therefore peaceful, protest against them. This act of peacefully resisting against laws that are …show more content…
No two men stand out in past history greater than Henry David Thoreau and the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior, whom gave their respective peoples the hope that they had long since been searching for. Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man" (Thoreau), and sparked a revolution against the government of his time and fueled other revolts around the world, giving all men hope of a brighter future. Martin Luther King Junior wrote a letter while he was imprisoned in a jail in Birmingham Alabama and said, "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust" (King Jr.). Thoreau and King Jr. both exemplified what an unjust law is to them. Both Thoreau and King Jr. disapprove of how the governments have given them too many unjust laws and how they must rise up to fight against it by not shedding …show more content…
No longer do we strive against one another for food or for land, and no longer do we fight our wars as we used to, those have all transmogrified into small skirmishes between different units and carries less casualties in the physical - but not mental - sense. In this new world that we live in, resisting peacefully is more of a challenge and one must use brash actions to do so. In the case of Edward Snowden, releasing top secret government documents out to the public, was that action that he had to take in order to stand up for the people. In his article, "Why Edward Snowden Is a Hero", John Cassidy explains his - and the people's - views on why what Snowden did was a good thing. Cassidy states that, "In revealing the colossal scale of the U.S. government’s eavesdropping on Americans and other people around the world, he has performed a great public service..." (Cassidy); this illustrates that while mankind has moved onto a more advanced society, it too brings with it more advanced infringements onto our privacy and rights as human

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