Tax-evader.

I'm not sure what Thoreau's city-state world of insignificant government would look like, and I don't understand why this twisted reasoning is held up by American English teachers as enlightened. For good mid-19th century anti-slavery and reformative writing, don't start here. Try Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, etc.

As to influencing MLK Jr and Gandhi, etc, those men may have adopted one of his principles but they only applied it to specific social issues. Thoreau makes a sweeping dismissal of government and all it does, unless it's serving his personal agenda and belief system. Clearly he does not recognize that one of the major obligations of republican (not Republican Party) government is to provide us with a framework in which to construct a society where one individual's belief system does NOT supersede everyone else.

The text does exemplify American individualism, and I am not claiming that he is wrong - only that his extremism is as misleading as the blind patriots he mocks.

"It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."-Henry David Thoreau

Government done correctly legislates what is right. HDT could have done more good but being part of the solution and becoming the best damn legislator he claims America needed. Instead, he wrote this whiny, self-justifying treatise. ( )