On Thoreau's Civil Disobedience 1

I finished up The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (that explains the last post) a while back and needed another book to start. When I finish a really good book I feel the need to wind down a little before stopping for a while. The rebound book almost acts as a cool down run (if I ran) for me. This time I grabbed a Thoreau anthology. The last time I read any Thoreau was in high school. I have revisited a lot of those freshman English books recently and they are so much better than I remember. Maybe it's because books like 1984 really appeal to middle aged men like my high school English teachers and now me.

Thoreau: I started reading the first paragraph of "Civil Disobedience" and I was amazed at how timely his comments are about standing armies. I gained a little sense of relief that the current leaders were just as evil as the leaders of the past.
"Oh no you don't Mr President, you don't have the monopoly on evil" -James K. to George W.

The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. - H.D. Thoreau

Time Machine: Now, if you substitute just one word in the above paragraph you will magically thrust Mr. Thoreau forward some 150 years. Now H.D., as he would like to be called, would probably write in a Blog. This is now a commonplace thing for eternal whiners to do. And he would have probably written the same above paragraph in his blog, except for one word. But what is that word? (Hint: Replace Mexico with a word that rhymes with MyBack.) The more things change . . . .