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| English: Portrait by Benjamin D. Maxham (daguerreotype), black and white of Henry David Thoreau in June 1856. The writer-collar post a beard and is dressed in a black frock coat, a white shirt and a black bow tie. Français : Portrait par Benjamin D. Maxham (daguerréotype), en noir et blanc de Henry David Thoreau, en juin 1856. L'écrivain poste une barbe-collier et est habillé d'une redingote noire, d'une chemise blanche et d'un noeud papillon noir. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Whistleblowing is calling illegal or unethical activities to the attention of the proper authorities. It's NOT releasing classified documents to the world. This might be properly characterized as civil disobedience. BUT civil disobedience requires a trial and very possibly punishment… and I deftly do not mean trial in the court of public opinion.
Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less despondent spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her--the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. - Thoreau
http://www.transcendentalists.com/civil_disobedience.htm
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