The Perils Of Foolish Use
May, 2004
The career of rugged individualism in America has run mostly to absurdity, tragic or comic. But it has also done a certain amount of good. There was a streak of it in Thoreau, who went to jail to protest the Mexican War. And that streak has continued in his successors, who have suffered penalties for civil disobedience because of their perception that law and government were not always or necessarily right. This is individualism of a kind rugged enough, and it has typically been authenticated by...
