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The Cultural Roots of America’s Failed Coronavirus Response Date back to Emerson and Thoreau
Noted nineteenth-century American writer Henry David Thoreau opens his 1849 essay “Resistance to Civil Government,” one of the most famous political essays of all time, with the immortal lines:
“I heartily accept the motto, — “That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, — “That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”
Thoreau’s writings, this essay in particular in addition to his landmark work Walden, have earned him a powerful place not just in the American literary canon but, really, in the American cultural mentality. He articulated a romantic individualist ethos that licensed citizens to question, indeed outright dismiss and even ignore, authority and the rule of law. Like that other famous American character Jiminy Cricket who urged us to always let our conscience be our guide, so too did Thoreau, as when he asked, “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?” And he answered his own question, thusly, “The only obligation I have a right to assume, is to do at any time…
