Pharisaical practices are as popular today as they may be supposed to have been in the time of Christ -- and one of the biggest hypocrisies of our time is what Roosevelt called "the great arsenal of democracy," the shield-phrase with which the U.S. would pursue its policy of "manifest destiny" all over the globe (and an ideology it had been pursuing since the end of the 19th century when a Republican White House paved the way for Wall Street to start directing foreign policy) (Jarecki 41). The amount of government waste that is poured into overseas wars in the Middle East would today have Thoreau off in the woods again, lamenting his heart out like a prophet of old. The same callousness with which our government devalues human life for the sake of profit is what Thoreau opposed in "Civil Disobedience": as he himself states, "I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home…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" (par. 10).

Obviously,...

But such pragmatism fails to nurture respect "for the right": rather than wasting our resources and (how many?) lives on a war officially waged to spread democracy, unofficially waged for control, Thoreau teaches us that "it is not desirable to cultivate a respect fro 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…Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice" (par. 4). The government that fails to teach its citizens in the ways of truth and justice, fails to conduct itself in a way befitting a governor. The citizen's role, then, becomes not one of blind submission to a rule that is neither just nor right -- but adherence to a higher law -- the metaphysical truth and transcendental virtues, praised by the old world, for which Thoreau extols us all to reach.
In conclusion, Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" serves as a kind of signpost pointing out the way to a greater governor than the one that distorts the truth for the sake of its own gain or profit. While the governor today is only nominally located in the White House, the reality is that it is, as John Perkins notes, a corportocracy located on Wall Street, where right and wrong are judged solely on the number of dollars either produces.

Works Cited

Jarecki, Eugene. The American Way of War. New York, NY: Free Press, 2008. Print.

Lenat, Richard. "Thoreau Reader." 2009. Web. 9 Aug 2011.

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-

Koehler, 2004. Print.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Civil Disobedience." Web. 9 Aug 2011.