"How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggreived? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are chated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle, - the perception and the performance of right, - changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with any thing which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; aye, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine."
-Henry David Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government
Thoreau was no doubt a rebel. And that, no more than Jesus of Nazareth against corruption and indifference. You don't have to agree with all that Thoreau did and said to appreciate his call to action when action is required. Powers need to be confronted or else things stay the same. I've been guilty of voting for injustice in the ballot box of silence. At some level we've all done so at one point or another. What does it take to get good people to raise a fist? To confront? To act? When conscience leads comfort isn't the goal. This is a very real track in the way of Jesus of Nazareth.
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