Henry David Thoreau's Speech

Welcome to those of the Commonwealth Club of California. Today, I would like to address a matter important to us all lately, especially under our current administration and recent employed laws utilizing some ideas about government put forth by Henry David Thoreau. I will provide you with my personal recommendation throughout this speech.

Really, there are three basic “camps” when it comes to how people should protest and change laws and unacceptable views and positions commonly held by those in their governmental bodies. One point of view is one which professes to work within “the system” to change it. So in other words, if you are dissatisfied with the way things are or are being run, become part of that system and work to change from

In Thoreau’s time, slavery was an issue that society was struggling with. Many citizens were against slavery even though the government tolerated the practice. Yet the citizens and the political party are still to blame. As Thoreau states, “Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may.” So in other words, he’s saying the Northerners were part of the problem government and did not act to change the problem because they were profiting from slavery. Thoreau’s solution then for this, was to “drop out” or give up trying to change this condition and live as much as possible removed from the

I understand that Thoreau’s idea is an unconventional idea, but it's impractical to think one can go, “off the grid” it is nice to think to be removed from society, but it's just not reasonable to live like that especially in this day and