What kind of government commands your respect ?

Thoreau wanted as little government as possible. Thoreau’s big idea was that the individual needs to be responsible for his or herself. He felt a basic bureaucracy to handle the fundamentals of a nation-state needed to exist, like national defense, but governments needed to keep out of the private citizens business. He felt that taxes should be minimal if any (Thoreau was always in trouble for not paying his taxes) and that the individual must respond for their own needs.