Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau believes the motto: “The government is best which governs the least.” There are many applications of this belief, from the one that states that the government not passing stimulus bills to military applications. Thoreau lived through arguably the most illegitimated war in America’s history, possibly more so then Vietnam. Therefore, his open distaste for the war is understandable due to his transcendentalist beliefs. He believes, almost correctly in response to the Mexican War, that people should not be forced to go to war for diplomatic reasons. In this War, there was no open aggression by the Mexican people; in fact, the war was mainly a territorial inquisition by the United States. This is much the same argument as Joe makes in Johnny Got His Gun when he says that people should go to war only when they have an actual woman they are defending (opposed to defending women in general). He believed that war was so horrible that the only way to justify it was personal reason to go to war. However, imagine America without California, Texas, New Mexico, and Nevada. How would history have been different with our country surrounded by Mexico on the south and Canada in the north?