Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience

2. Thoreau considers civil disobedience as a duty rather than a right because he believes that the individual should “make known what kind of government would command his respect,” which “will be one step toward obtaining it” (941). When a civil law, or a law established by the government contradicts with the divine law, it becomes a duty for an individual to disobey the civil law. In his essay, Thoreau describes majority of the men as “machines,” serving the state “not as merely as men mainly” (941). Thoreau believes that in order to preserve the moral sense of the individual, civil disobedience is necessary and it is the duty of the people to go against the civil law.
4. The two government policies Thoreau most objects to are the policies on slavery and the Mexican War. Thoreau believes that these two policies were against his “common sense and conscience” (941). He believes that if enough people join together to object paying taxes like he “declined” to pay his, the state would examine the policies, again (952). His reasons on objecting the government policies is that he believes “the only obligation which I have the right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right” (941).
6.
The purpose of both Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is to talk about the injustice law in the society. Thoreau explains how the government is run by the majority “because they are physically the strongest” (941). Thoreau believes a society “in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice” (941). Thoreau suggests to the audience that it is necessary to “resist” the injustice “for the most part” (942). Similarly, King states that “one has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws,” and that “conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws” (265). Through non-violence protest, both Thoreau and King are encouraging their audience to take the duty of civil