massachusetts..what went wrong?

not so far back,,this commonwealth(yak), was filled with men and woman of upstanding and outstanding character and purveyors of individual sovereignty,,,what would they see now? sure, as individuals some are still strong in their beliefs,,but not enough to affect the ruling body of this state, who, in my not so humble opinion, could never be qualified to clean this mans shoes...being jailed for refusal to pay war tax for an immoral war,,,refusal is a sovereign persons RIGHT>>>
(ps..he grew beans as staple during his time in the woods at walden,,and only forsook his residence because of loneliness)


"Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practise in himself. ... He went to gaol for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable." - Mohandas Gandhi

"... when, in the mid-1950's, the United States Information Service included as a standard book in all their libraries around the world a textbook ... which reprinted Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience,' the late Senator Joseph McCarthy succeeded in having that book removed from the shelves — specifically because of the Thoreau essay." - Walter Harding, in The Variorum Civil Disobedience

"I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest." - Martin Luther King, Jr, Autobiography