Civil Disobedience
Fifty-two environmental disobedience activist were arrested in front of the white house as part of an ongoing protest called the Obama administration to reject a permit for the 1,700 mile keystone XL pipeline project which would deliver Canada tar sand oils to refineries to Texas, and rather focus on developing clean energy. The act of disobedience must be illegal, or at least be deemed illegal by powerful adversaries, and the actor must know this if it is to be considered an act of civil disobedience. Gandhi’s spiritual influence throughout India has remained undiminished; his sainthood was well established in his lifetime and accentuated by his tragic assassination by a young Hindu fanatic in 1948. The major type of
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The trigger event was the decision of four Greensboro, North Carolina, Negro students to bring their books to a segregated Woolworth lunch counter and simply stay there and study when they were refused service. Another type of civil disobedience relating to peace and war issues is the refusal to pay all or a part of the income tax, unless or until the government abandons a particular policy. Following Thoreau’s example, diverse Americans have attempted this type of protest, but if they have significant income or property the U.S. government usually can extract the tax money one way or another eventually, with fines and possible litigation costs added. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, like we know it, the last improvement possible in government? I believe the State will soon take all my work of this sort out of my hands, and then I shall be no better a patriot than my fellow-countrymen. Seen from a lower view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is