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Principles of civil disobedience
The case against civil disobedience
The case against civil disobedience
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Principles of civil disobedience
The case against civil disobedience
The case against civil disobedience
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Recommended: Principles of civil disobedience
Martin Luther King Jr once stated, “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” in his Letter from Birmingham Jail in 1963. He was invoking the principle of civil disobedience. He wasn't justifying breaking laws just because, but instead, meant that you break the law and accept your punishment, in hopes that people will come to see that the law is unethical. Civil disobedience plays an important role in how our society has been shaped up until this point.
Civil disobedience against unjust laws allows people to recognize the faults in our society and government. This is especially true when large numbers of people come together to protest for a certain cause, and against a law, they believe the government should not enforce. For example, Mahatma
“Anyone in a free a society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law…”(1), Henry David Thoreau wrote. With “civil disobedience” the right of the people sometimes must be exercised by protest, and can be achieved non-violently. We can read this is Thoreau’s writing, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi and Thomas Jefferson. According to our great writers, civil disobedience shows refusing to disobey laws.
The artist John Trumbal, under his 1817 commission from the U.S. Congress, completed the work, General George Washington Resigning His Commission, in 1824. It was hung in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in 1826. The historical context portrays Washington as a royal prominent figure. Both his family and colleagues are pictured.
Civil disobedience is when a person or group protests a law that they find morally wrong. The person is usually peaceful and will accept whatever consequences arise due to breaking the law (Suber). People use civil disobedience to draw attention to the laws they find morally wrong and to get the laws changed (Starr). Susan B.Anthony was a women’s rights activist. She was a strong woman who dedicated her whole life to gaining rights for women.
As Martin Luther King Jr. observes in his "Letters From a Birmingham Jail," it is a sad thing when people condemn the effects of civil disobedience without considering the conditions which festered and led to such a nonviolent protest. As Thoreau writes in his "Civil Disobedience," too much respect for the law can lead people to blindly to terrible things. Consider the Germans who, out of fear of the law, committed the atrocities of the Holocaust; or, the participants of the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures, in which men were instructed to continuously 'shock' a hidden person, and which, goaded on by the authority figure, continued even until the subject of the punishment (in actuality an actor) 'died.' Those who choose to take action to take down laws that do not uphold the morals of the people as a whole work instead towards a society based on considered values that respect all of its
Civil disobedience is an act or way of disobeying the law/government. You don’t cooperate with the law(s). Many people don’t cooperate with a law and so they protest in a way without using violence. Protesting is part of an act of civil disobedience, it’s a way for people to show or prove their point of view. In the article “ On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” states when a person’s conscience and law clash, the person would follow their conscience rather than the law.
It can be claimed that it is true that we have a moral responsibility to disobey unjust law, however, in doing so is unjust in itself. Taking into account the argument against harm and that one accepts that doing good is just, we must never intentionally do wrong. It is also true in this case when we are harmed, we must not return a harm for a harm. If these statements are true, in that they are good and just, then civil disobedience must be an unjust act. If doing harm to the law we deem unjust through an act of civil disobedience is considered an evil act, and to do good is to be just, then harming the law is an unjust action.
Should the law be a higher priority than one’s own morals? Henry David Thoreau, a well-known American Transcendentalist, once wrote that “the government itself, which is the only mode which people have chosen to execute their will is equally liable to be abused and perverted before people can act through it” (A1). After witnessing many unjust and immoral activities, such as slavery and the Mexican-American war (something he viewed as unnecessary violence fueled by avarice for land), Thoreau lost faith in the government. In order for people to avoid becoming “agents of injustice” themselves, he encouraged them to act according to their conscience rather than blindly following the law. Although I believe that in an ideal world people should
Civil Disobedience is an important moral responsibility of a citizen, however it should not get to the level of illegal activity under any circumstances, because great reform can be brought peacefully not violently. In the title named "On Civil Disobedience" by Mohandas K. Ghandi once said: “No country has ever become or will ever become, happy though victory in war”(Mohandas K. Gandhi , 148). Even that long ago, when war was at high, and people embraced it, he knew that the only thing war brought was death, and depression among civilians. This method of civil disobedience has only resulted into more wars, and no real solutions. The most efficient way to the be civilly disobedient is to be peaceful, but willing to stand up for your cause.
Herbert J. Storing, an Associate Professor of Political Science, in “The Case Against Civil Disobedience,” writes, “One of the practical consequences of this institution [civil disobedience] is to divert disobedience and even revolution into the channel of law” (97). What Storing is saying is that civil disobedience will encourage people to break the laws and they will hide under civil disobedience to avoid the law. Also, civil disobedience might split society by creating disagreements with the people, and it could create a political instability. However, Storing fails to see that those who break an unjust law, as discussed above, do not avoid the law, in fact they show respect to the law as they willingly accept the consequences. By accepting the consequences, they show that they are not acting for their own interests but for society’s.
Civil Disobedience Civil disobedience is an act that opposes the law peacefully, and are willing to accept the consequences to their decision. There is civil disobedience in the world today, because people believe in something at needs to be changed and need to grab the world’s attention to do so. Civil disobedience has a positive impact upon a free society and there are some examples to prove this. The disobedience of people towards the government has affected many lives, especially in America. The Boston Tea Party and Dr. King are two popular examples in history, but we can still see disobedience in today’s time.
Civil disobedience is nonviolent resistance to a government’s law in seek of change. Civil disobedience is an effective way to bring about change because it is a harmless way of fighting an unjust law or idea, it can educate people about the cause, and it has been successful many times in history. First and foremost, civil disobedience is
Civil disobedience is the deliberate action against an unjust law to invoke a positive change in government and society. Civilians have the right to refute these types of unjust laws to eliminate inequality and government’s unjust nature by following conscience before laws for moral guidance. As demonstrated in Antigone, this is depicted by the daughter of Oedipus, who disobeys Creon’s law for the greater good because of the laws unjust nature. In Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, a naturalist, promotes this concept as well through his philosophical standpoint of the flaws of the government. Lastly, in Dr. King’s letter he qualifies the idea of civilians disobeying their government through non violent campaigns to stand up against
Civil Disobedience is known as breaking the law because you don 't agree with a certain law or have a peaceful protest about that law or what you believe in. An example would be when Mahatma Gandhi walked miles to the Indian ocean as the citizens gathered more and more to fight for there Indian Independence. This occasion was called the Salt March. The reason for The Salt March was a March were all the citizens from India walked with gandhi to fight back for their Independence from the British, since it was taken away from the British.