{"id":5219,"date":"2013-06-23T19:38:31","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T01:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5219"},"modified":"2013-06-23T19:38:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T01:38:31","slug":"thoreau-reminds-us-about-one-of-our-few-tools-remaining-to-control-the-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5219","title":{"rendered":"Thoreau reminds us about one of our few tools remaining to control the government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A href=\"http:\/\/fabiusmaximus.com\/2013\/06\/24\/snowden-civil-disobedience-51734\/\"> Henry David Thoreau, via Fabius Maximus<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents on injustice.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026 In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.<\/p>\n<p>Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others \u2014 as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders \u2014 serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as the rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few \u2014 as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men \u2014 serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Henry David Thoreau, via Fabius Maximus: Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents on injustice. \u2026 In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}