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Effortless English Podcast | Learn English with AJ Hoge

Disobedience

Effortless English Podcast | Learn English with AJ Hoge

AJ Hoge

Language Learning, Education

4.61.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2006

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Transcript

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0:00.0

Okay, welcome to Effortless English.

0:10.0

Okay, welcome to Effortless English. Let's get started.

0:13.5

Today's article is titled, Disobedience.

0:17.8

Law never made men more just.

0:20.7

And by means of their respect for it, the well disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

0:27.0

A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, privates, and

0:36.8

all, marching in admirable order over hills to the wars, against their wills, indeed against their common sense and

0:45.3

consciences. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are

0:49.7

concerned. They are all peaceably inclined.

0:53.0

Now, what are they?

0:55.0

Men at all?

0:57.0

Or small movable forts at the service of some unscrupulous man in power.

1:02.0

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as

1:06.6

machines with their bodies. They are the standing army. In most cases, there's no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense.

1:17.0

But they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones.

1:22.0

And wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well.

1:26.8

Such people command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.

1:32.1

They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.

1:35.0

Yet, such as these are commonly considered good citizens.

1:40.0

Henry David Thoreau from Civil Disobedience.

1:45.0

Many of the abominable problems in the world are the result of obedience.

1:50.0

In our personal lives, in the media, we cry and moan and blame our leaders for the problems of the world.

...

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