Disobedience In America

Civil disobedience can change the world in this day and time. By definition, civil disobedience is the refusal to comply with certain laws and to pay taxes and fines in a peaceful form of political protest. In the past, revolutionists and abolitionists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Harriet Tubman have used civil disobedience to advocate for change in their communities. Civil disobedience is an important action to change the world today because millennials have the available resources and willpower to do so, a law can still be considered immoral, and there is a history of success when this method is used. This act of protest can still be used effectively in today’s time if used for the appropriate reasons.

Civil disobedience has been influencing people since mid 1800s. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, civil disobedience is “the refusal to obey governmental demands or commands especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government.” In a more simple way of describing civil disobedience, it is to refuse to obey the law when believed this is unjust, without being violent, According to the philosopher Ronald Dworkin, there are three types of civil disobedience: integrity-based, justice-based and policy-based.

Civil Disobedience What is civil disobedience? What does it do? Why is it important? Is it a right thing? These few questions might pop into one 's head when they hear civil disobedience.

INTRODUCTION Civil disobedience is the active, refusal to obey some laws, demands, or commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience, not always, but can be termed as Nonviolent Resistance in nature. The word civil has many definitions: “relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state”and it literally means “disobedience towards state”. Mahatma Gandhi used civil disobedience to derive the relation between Thoreau’s civil disobedience and his own Satyagraha.

America is a free society, but the result of that is some people are unhappy with the laws put in place to ensure said free society. When that does happen, those people tend to resist the laws to show their discontent to the government. They can either violently resist, which is illegal and penalties are high, or they can peacefully resist. Peaceful resistance, or civil disobedience is quite popular and has proven to be successful. It is also legal and as long as you don't break any laws in the process, cannot be stopped without a valid reason.

Recently in Hong Kong, young protesters have taken civil disobedience to a whole new level. The pro- democracy protesters have been spotted picking up garbage, washing off graffiti, singing, and doing homework. The protesters are using this extreme civil disobedience to show citizens and government officials they are looking to improve Hong Kong, not destroy it. Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi, and Henry David Thoreau also strongly believed in the effectiveness of civil disobedience to encourage change. In their writings, “from Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” by Martin Luther King, Jr, “On Civil Disobedience,” by Mohandas K. Gandhi and “from Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau, they discuss their views on civil disobedience.

Civil Disobedience and its Significance Dr. Martin Luther King’s, “Letter From Birmingham Jail” was addressing to several clergymen his reasoning behind civil disobedience. Dr. King discussed just and unjust laws, and explains his thesis- justice upholds the dignity of the human spirit, while injustice works against it. Dr. King does, in fact, make a convincing argument for civil disobedience because he gives significant criteria by which civil disobedience can and will defeat unjust laws. Dr. King first explains that nonviolent direct action, or civil disobedience, is required to create crisis and confront the main issue at hand. Throughout his preaching of the mistreatment of African Americans in the south, Dr. King drew attention to the

The United States of America is considered one of the most “free” country in the world to outsiders. However, these results is a collective endeavor from the past, with many revisions to the laws, changes to the government and the substitution of numerous politicians. Equally important, unjust laws and corrupt bureaucrats can often times lead to civil disobedience or even a revolution. That being said, Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine and Henry David Thoreau are all instrumental architects to early U.S. politics that would eventually shape the political culture of civil disobedience. In short, Samuel Adams was a key figure in the American revolution who organized important oppositions to Great Britain.

Throughout decades, most of citizens cannot grasp the concept of the purpose and the importance of Civil Disobedience. According to John Rawls, an American moral and political philosopher, he (1971) states that “civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies. On this account, people who engage in civil disobedience are willing to accept the legal consequences of their actions, as this shows their fidelity to the rule of law. Civil disobedience, given its place at the boundary of fidelity to law, is said to fall between legal protest, on the one hand, and conscientious refusal, revolutionary action, militant protest and organized forcible resistance, on the other hand.” Therefore,

Oscar Wilde states that disobedience is one's greatest virtue which has been proven true all over the world. Without disobedience, the world would not have improved and became what it is today. Disobedience is a way of questioning the rules that are set in place and challenging authority. First, disobedience dates all the way back to 1773 when the government put taxes on tea to in debt the British people. When the colonists started to feel like this tax was unfair, they went on ships to deliver tea and dumped it overboard.

Civil disobedience is a way for people to express themselves on issues that are problematic to society in a peaceful matter. In developed countries like the United States, people have the freedom and a right to be civil disobedience and do so for a better change. Some may see it as a disrespectful way to disrupt the peace and in many communities. It is a dispute between it being right or wrong. Some feel like the power is being taken away from them and they need to do something about it but not cause a scene or disrupt anyone in any way, I believe people have the right to do this because I don't see the problem in someone speaking up something wrong.

"Civil Disobedience, I shall argue, is an unsuccessful attempt to combine, on the level of principle, revolutions and conventional political action" The anonymous author of "The Case Against Civil Disobedience" asserts that peaceful protesting does not play a significant role in reforming political norms. His words often ring true in protests. In many instances of Civil Disobedience, the "peaceful" protests become dangerously violent. They tend to cause more tension and discourse than they cause change. Protests lead to increased divisions between the two viewpoints, causing support for current implication to solidify out of fear of change.

Civil disobedience positively impact a free Society because civil disobedience is it right exercised by what is defined as a free Society. Civil Disobedience give citizens a peaceful way to demonstrate that they do not agree with a certain law or laws. Citizens should have the right to be able to peacefully go against a law if they feel strongly about what is taking place at the time that encourages the law that the people disagree with. Rosa Parks demonstrated Civil Disobedience when she refused to give up her seat for a white person. At the time word segregation and racism were being fought against, Rosa Parks today chance by not obeying the law which says she had to give up her seat if asked so a white person could sit there.