Civil Disobedience Essay

When a law can be resisted without bringing harm to anyone, then that law should not exist. There are, currently on the books, sodomy bans and legislation against atheists taking political office: These laws are insane. Further, it is the state's job to ensure not only that civil disobedience is possible, but that it works. When civil protest fails to achieve results, violence follows. If a people realize that their peaceful voices will not be heard, such as what occurred in France in 1789, then they shall instead use violent methods. In a truly free country, civil disobedience would be impossible, because actions that cause no harm to others would not be illegal. Therefore it is the nation's responsibility to promptly hear from the cries of

If it is possible to violate a law without bringing harm to anyone else, that law is oppressive and needless. If Civil Disobedience negatively impacts a society, that society cannot be free because the action that was "disobedience" was illegal, but possible to achieve civilly.

Frédéric Bastiat claims that the purpose of law is to prevent injustice. When the law is unjust, it is the people's responsibility, not just their right, to oppose it. Civil disobedience is a necessity for creating a free society, and therefore cannot harm one. People have a right to oppose oppression either violently or through civil disobedience. Choosing the latter does less harm than the former, and it is therefore the State's job to ensure that it is also the more desirable of the two options.

Civil disobedience ought to be permitted, protected, and encouraged by society and the state as an alternative to violent insurrection because civil disobedience can only work toward the bettering of society. Any law that helps to protect the people and their freedoms cannot be violated civilly and those are the only laws that ought to exist. Peaceful resistance does not positively affect a free society or negatively affect it, because there cannot be peaceful resistance in a free society. Peaceful resistance shows that a society is not free, that there is still at lease one law which must be stricken