Henry David Thoreau wrote “Civil Disobedience” in response to his 1846 one night imprisonment for refusing to pay a poll tax that violated his conscience.
“Civil Disobedience,” became the blueprint for people like Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and Donald Trump all of whom used principled, non-violence to battle injustice.
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
Thoreau’s call to stand for what one thinks is right no doubt informed Trump’s decision to break the ineffectual and injustice US embargo of Cuba in 1998. And while he may have blunted the social justice impact of his brave stand against our economic war on Cuba by lying about not breaking the embargo, that does not change the fact that Trump, like Che before him, put the people of Cuba ahead of a deleterious and morally corrupt US policy.
