One hundred and sixty-four years ago today, on May 6, 1862, Henry David Thoreau succumbed to tuberculosis and died at his family home in Concord, Massachusetts. He was 44.
Thoreau remains relevant
today and will continue to be for future generations because of the timeless
questions he posed and the solutions he offered for living a meaningful life. “Walden;
or Life in the Woods” is the 1854 book he is best known for, but the work
most applicable to our times during Donald Trump’s catastrophic presidency is
his 1849 essay, “Civil Disobedience.”
Thoreau’s thesis was that
citizens had a moral obligation to oppose their government’s unjust and
inhumane policies, even if doing so required difficult sacrifices. That’s what
nearly 100,000 ordinary Minnesotans did when they braved freezing temperatures
in January in Minneapolis and risked their lives to protest the illegal detention
and deportation of immigrants and the killings of American citizens Renee Good
and Alex Pretti by heavily armed ICE agents.
By his example, Thoreau
taught us to live by the courage of our convictions. Slavery was the evil of his
time. The Civil War began in April 1861, thirteen months before his death.
Thoreau was active in the Underground Railroad in Concord, helping enslaved
people escape to Canada. “I do not hesitate to say,” wrote Thoreau in Civil
Disobedience, “that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once
effectively withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the
government of Massachusetts, and not wait until they constitute a majority …”
There may not be slavery in
America today, but Trump’s reckless and imperial presidency is no less evil to
our polarized country. The “No Kings Day” protests against Trump would have
pleased Thoreau. In the most recent one held in March this year, an estimated 9
million Americans participated across all 50 U.S. states, making it one of the
largest single-day mass demonstrations in American history.
I joined about 10,000 of my compatriots
in San Jose, California, where one sign in a sea of signs summed up why we were
protesting: “Democracy dies when good people stay silent.” As Thoreau wrote in Civil
Disobedience: “Let every man make known what kind of government would
command his respect and that will be one step toward obtaining it.” His
subliminal message to us was to hope and act but not to hope more than we acted.
Trump is destroying
civilizational norms and ruining America with irreversible damage by his predatory
“Might is Right” and “Law of the Jungle” policies at home and abroad. He has
imposed tariffs as sanctions and punishments on our allies and has threatened
to commit war crimes against countries that refuse his rapacious demands. He
unleashed a war of choice against Iran that continues to batter the global
economy. Ordinary Americans and people around the globe are struggling to meet
basic needs amid skyrocketing food and energy prices, with no end in sight.
Thoreau’s call to action is as potent now as when he made it almost two
centuries ago: “All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right
to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its
inefficiency are great and unendurable.”
On July 4, 2026, we will
celebrate the 250th anniversary, the semiquincentennial, of the signing of the Declaration
of Independence. “The American government,” wrote Thoreau in Civil
Disobedience, “-what is it but a tradition, though a recent one,
endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing
some of its integrity?”
Under Trump, America has
been hemorrhaging integrity, dignity, decency and empathy at a horrific rate.
It is our duty to stop this hemorrhage and restore America’s moral weight. Perhaps
the best way to accomplish this is to vote for candidates in the consequential
November midterm election at the House, Senate, state, and local levels who put
country and Constitution above loyalty to a demagogue.
