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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government
never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the
alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep
the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not
educate. The character inherent in the American people has
done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done
somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in
its way. For government is an expedient, by which men would
fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been
said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let
alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
