I've been reading Thoreau again, always a dangerous practice, and I decided that since I can't get along with anyone around here who's living I'd start picking fights with dead guys just to keep my hand in.

Thoreau had a lot of ideas, more than I'm ever liable to come up with, but I can't help thinking if he were alive today he'd be one of those guys who still has the long hair, probably in a pony-tail, that makes you want to yell at them to let them know that the '70s are over. "Hey, you! It's a new millennium, get a haircut!" He also was a pretentious braying jack*** who put out more manure than a dozen cattle ranches.

Thoreau inspired a lot of the nonsense that went on in the '70s, nonsense that I was guilty of as well. The thing is, I grew out of childish things and I guess one of them was Thoreau.

I have to admit to getting a kick when someone sneaks in a reference to H.D.T.

I love to read detective novels and one of my favorite detectives was Spenser. You might remember him from the television series "Spenser for Hire." but I met him in the library stacks while poring over a new book I'd found. Spenser had a quick wit and would occasionally drop little hints that he had more than a passing acquaintance with Thoreau. I remember one time he was quoting something and his girlfriend, lover or whatever made a remark about him building a cabin by a pond.

Obscure, sure, but that was the appeal, knowing something that would pass over most people's heads.

Thoreau had a lot of good ideas and spoke against injustice; his "Slavery in Massachusetts" is an eloquent appeal for abolition and for the rights of man.

He also had it right when he said "Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents on injustice."

But for all of that he still missed the mark.

The thing is that Thoreau had a theorist's understanding of issues, not an engineer's.

The difference between the two is the difference between plans on paper and a product out in the real-world. I grew up in a household, and a wider family, of mechanics, machinists and engineers.

They were people who worked with materials and machines and understood what they were capable of.

I trained in electronics and one of the phrases that I learned the hard way was "smoke test". No, it didn't involve cigarettes; it is the final test a circuit, or machine, undergoes. If it passes it is proved out, if it doesn't the failure often produces sparks, smoke and occasional flames. Thoreau's ideas often don't pass the smoke test.

Thoreau said that he heartily endorsed the motto "That government is best which governs least" but he went further and said he believed "That government is best which governs not at all". The former I can support but the latter is just plain "male bovine fecal matter" and deserves to be treated the way so many of his ideas should be, with scorn and derision. Thoreau also had disdain for the military, specifically the standing army.

He said "The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well."

Thoreau shows his lack of understanding of the motives of the men and women who serve in our armed services and law enforcement departments. Far from being "wooden men" they are often articulate individuals who have high intelligence. Their motivations are an individual thing but many; and in my experience speaking to those who serve, the majority, do so because they realize that the benefits of a culture are dependent on those who serve willingly and they are willing.

Thoreau often wrote about the pleasure he got from merely thinking about purchasing property instead of having to go through with the messy details of actually doing it.

I know people like that and they are all dreamers. Dreams are nice but it is the person that takes their ideas and puts them to use that actually accomplishes something.

A lot of people today quote ol' Hank but I'm afraid they are infected with the same virus he was, the inability to reconcile the ideal with the real world we find ourselves in.

Sure, they have a lot of good ideas, but as long as they remain idealists in the end they will accomplish nothing.

To quote Shakespeare (admittedly only a part that sounds like he agrees with me,) "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."