Disobeying The Hemlock By Socrates

Drinking the Hemlock

Throughout the annals of history, laws have been passed which were seen as unwarranted or unjust by the masses. In some cases, the people that the law governed toiled away in anonymity, suffering without a voice until they finally died, deprived of rights to which they may otherwise have enjoyed. In other cases, the people aired their grievances to a government whose ears proved deaf and whose eyes proved blind. Neither of these methods have made much difference in the grand scheme of history, with the targeted governments affected either very little or not at all. There is, however, a third method: civil disobedience, or the peaceful and purposeful disobeying of a law that is seen as unjust. Just ask the countless

One of the earliest well-known examples is that of Socrates, who, despite having been ordered (under penalty of death) to stop teaching his pupils to question everything, refused to compromise his integrity. He continued to teach his students the art of the question, and once he was found out, he calmly accepted his punishment. This simple act may not have changed the face of the Athenian government, but it sparked a revolution in the way people thought of the world around them, a revolution which has changed the way governments function the world over. Now, we do not accept everything that the government does out of hand, we question their reasoning and their methods. And by questioning their methods, we ensure that the government is kept as honest as is possible in this day and

Freedom rides, lunch counter sit-ins, and Rosa Parks’ famous refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white man are all examples of the role of civil disobedience in the fight for equality. As Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” Peaceful protests were the cornerstone of the civil rights movement in the sixties, and through this medium, African Americans got their point across to the nation. When the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, it became clear that civil disobedience not only was an effective method, but the most effective one. In recent years, civil disobedience has not dropped in popularity. On April 12th, 2016, over four-hundred people were arrested in Washington, D.C. for protesting outside of Congress as a part of “Democracy Spring”, an organization with wide-ranging focuses and multitudes of supporters. On that particular day, the issue was campaign finance, and they minced no words in their disapproval of money’s influence on politics. While their demonstrations are still ongoing and their effects not yet entirely clear, one thing is certain: their voice will be