Thoreau Daguerrotype – Public Domain

Watching Donald Trump’s disjointed, narcissistic ramble at the United Nations, I kept thinking: “Why don’t the delegates walk out?” After all, he insulted many of their countries. “You’re destroying your countries. Your countries are going to hell,” he shouted. Walking out on speakers at the U.N. during the annual General Assembly meeting has precedents: U.S. diplomats walked out on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speeches from 2009 to 2012. And this year, after Trump’s muddled 57-minute performance, more than 100 diplomats from over 50 countries walked out when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to the podium. Why didn’t any delegate walk out on Trump? And outside the U.N., where is civil disobedience in the United States today?

The 19th-century American Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) is considered the father of civil disobedience. His 1849 essay On Resistance to Civil Government – later retitled Civil Disobedience – has inspired generations to challenge unjust government policies. Thoreau refused to pay the state poll tax to protest the Mexican-American War and slavery. More than a century later, folk singer and activist Joan Baez followed his example, refusing to pay a portion of her federal income tax. She justified her refusal, saying: “This country has gone mad. But I will not go mad with it. I will not pay for organized murder. I will not pay for the war in Vietnam.” Other non-taxpaying protesters against the Vietnam War included Nobel Prize winners George Wald and Salvador Luria.

Refusing........

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