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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend
it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people
themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the
people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its
din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.
Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even
impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we
must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any
enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.
It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It
does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has
Walden |
