Here are some quotes for this day on which we celebrate our independence and freedom.
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” – Henry David Thoreau
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” – Eugene V. Debs
“What the people want is very simple – they want an America as good as its promise.” – Barbara Jordan
“They came for the communists,
and I did not speak up because I wasn’t a communist;
They came for the socialists,
and I did not speak up because I was not a socialist;
They came for the union leaders,
and I did not speak up because I wasn’t a union leader;
They came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak up for me. ”
– Martin Niemoller
“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither.” – Mark Twain
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Victor Frankl
“People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.” – Søren Kierkegaard
A Far Country 
It’d be easier to adopt Thoreau’s ideas if he wasn’t so demanding of us, wouldn’t it?
I think I’ll compromise my values and just send money to the ACLU. It’s the American thing to do.