RESIST! Six Minutes On The Origin Of Modern American Resistance
The real story of Henry David Thoreau's time at Walden Pond is not one of escape, but of confrontation. It's where the ideological origins of modern American resistance were forged.
“How does it become a man to behave towards this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Photo by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
Link for more free-use resistance art
Thoreau’s essay and that morning stepping out of jail changed me in fundamental ways that continue to echo and reverberate. There’s a reason Trump and his Zionist owners are targeting soul-awakening university liberal arts programs and educators. Knowledge and a conscience are toxic to fascists.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (8/10/25)
In my freshman year of college I had an American Literature 101 class taught by Robert Burrows PhD, a superb teacher, scholar and WW II four-year Marine veteran with a passion for the work of Henry David Thoreau. As part of that class, we read Thoreau’s 1849 essay ‘Civil Disobedience’, originally titled ‘Resistance To Civil Government’.
Thoreau wrote his essay during the illegal Mexican-American War. He had been jailed a day or two for refusing to pay a tax to help fund the imperialist war, an experience that deeply affected his view on the role of the individual citizen at a time of government criminality and corruption.
Thoreau’s resistance becomes personal
Coming to college from a very conservative family at the tail-end of the Vietnam War, I was both befuddled and intrigued by Thoreau’s vision of the individual’s responsibility to be loyal to conscience, not government, but not completely sold.
That summer I joined my family in a town they had moved to and went to work in a local canning factory. Without belaboring the details, one night I was tackled and arrested by a half-dozen cops as I was curiously walking past a non-political public disturbance. I was hauled off to the town jail, which was packed with boisterous prisoners and locked up with 20 other prisoners in community room where the floor had been flooded by overflowing toilets.
Sometime around midnight I heard shouting in the hallway and looked out the small wire safety door window in time to see a teenage prisoner being hustled down the hallway accidentally knock the hat off one of the cops. Blood splattered the window as they beat the crap out of him.
Police violence was suddenly — viscerally — real to me in a way that all of the 1960s news reels of civil rights police beat downs weren’t.
Early the next morning I was able to call my embarrassed mother who came down to sign me out. No charges were filed and I was free to go. I distinctly remember stepping out of the jail building into the fresh morning air and seeing the blue sky, sunshine in the green trees and people walking past and Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ immediately came to mind. I felt how the view through the barred jailhouse window had changed his view and understanding of his neighbors passing by on their daily routine while their government murdered and enslaved innocents.
A few days later I was out on a highway headed north with my backpack and sleeping bag and spent the rest of the summer hitchhiking.
Thoreau’s essay and that morning stepping out of jail changed me in fundamental ways that continue to echo and reverberate. There’s a reason Trump and his Zionist owners are targeting soul-awakening university liberal arts programs and educators. Knowledge and a conscience are terrifying to fascists.
A few years later I came across this small photo of Thoreau and always had it as a reminder, pinned to the bulletin board above my various desks as I moved about in my career. A decade or so ago I spotted a perfect little frame and Thoreau’s image has been perched on various book cases ever since.
If ever there were a time for Thoreau’s teaching on the role of individual citizens of conscience in a time of tawdry government corruption, betrayal and obscene cruelty, this is it. The video below by Tad Stoermer, who has a book coming out on resistance, gives an excellent quick overview of Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’.
You can find a great collection of quotes from Thoreau’s essay here. Explore and share.
In the meantime, never forget:
“Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Resist
Persist
Don’t be complicit!
The Roots Of What Really Happened At Walden Pond — Thoreau & The Ideological Origins of True American Resistance
“No matter what language the founders used about liberty, they had written a constitution that entrenched a regime of abusive authority and it was destroying lives every day. And the founders had meant for it to do just that. That's what made resistance necessary. And Thoreau laid the grounds for what that meant and what it means. Nonviolence? You don't know Thoreau.”
By Tad Stoermer (8/7/25)
Most people think of Walden Pond and picture a man escaping society to live peacefully with nature. That's only half the story, and it’s the least important half. The real story of Walden is not one of escape, but of confrontation. It's where the ideological origins of modern American resistance were forged.
Henry David Thoreau went to the woods in 1845, but he didn't leave America behind. While living at Walden, the United States invaded Mexico to expand the territory of slavery. It was from his cabin that Thoreau walked into town, refused to pay the tax that funded this violence, and spent the night in jail. His time at the pond wasn't a retreat from the world's problems; it was a deliberate effort to gain a clearer view of them. He stripped his life down to its bare essentials to see the nation's injustices without distraction.
This video explores what happened at Walden Pond. It was here that he developed the core arguments of Resistance to Civil Government (or Civil Disobedience).
6-minute video
“His disgust with voting and petitions was a direct response to a political system where both choices — both major parties — were part of maintaining the status quo on the nation's most fundamental injustice. Thoreau lays all that out. And the idea that we should wait for justice to prevail; that liberty, that change, that structural change will come eventually, will come peacefully and quietly after another session, another compromise, another election against people whose entire interest it is to maintain the status quo, preventing change. Because — even among the performative opposition — that change might come for them too, and they ain't having it. To Thoreau, that was cowardice.
“Thoreau wrote ‘Resistance To Civil Governments’ first as a speech, as a call to action, to name all that for what it is and to refuse it. He stopped paying taxes. He went to jail not because it was performative, but because it was honest. It was a refusal to feed a system that fed on others. He saw the cost of compliance. He saw the rot in the foundation and he said no.”
— Tad Stoermer
And How It Works Now In Real Time: “It’s a bipartisan scandal”
“Our political system is dominated by special interests, extremely wealthy oligarch donors and multinational corporations. And those don't represent the will of the people. It's true for both parties. And I think it's pretty clear in the case of Trump he'll do whatever Israel says.”
— Whitney Webb, author of One Nation Under Blackmail and contributing editor of Unlimited Hangout, interview with Kim Iverson (8/9/25)
RESISTANCE SCAMMERS: Exposing The Democratic Fundraising Spam Scandal
[Editor’s Note: If you make political or campaign donations, watch this important report on Democratic Party-related and tolerated fundraising phone scams. It is noted during the report that donating through Act Blue is a reliable route to take. — Mark Taylor]
The Majority Report (8/9/25)
30-minute video
“Your church is a baby-house made of blocks.”
― Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Thoreau, like Erich Fromm expressed in Escape From Freedom, understood that escapism-not taking up of responsibilities necessary to gain and maintain freedom was the very escapism that would ensure the loss of freedom. "The real story of Henry David Thoreau's time at Walden Pond is not one of escape, but of confrontation." Excellent. "There’s a reason Trump and his Zionist owners are targeting soul-awakening university liberal arts programs and educators. Knowledge and a conscience are toxic to fascists." Superb!
Thanks Mark, it is so good and heartening to be reminded of people with integrity. Their legacy is there for the taking. And in the taking up is the remaking. But there is resistance to resisting as Glen has pointed out here. Fromm and Illich nailed it to the door of the church of apathy and ignorance.