Civil Disobedience Arguments
Civil disobedience will always positively impact a society that calls itself free, because a free society must allow for dissent. Peaceful resistance to law creates dialogue between people on both sides of the issue.
Famous boxer Muhammad Ali peacefully protested the Vietnam war and the draft be simply refusing to go to war. He didn’t try leaving the country or going to college to avoid the draft. Instead, he made powerful statements explaining his thinking. He questioned the way things were, questioning why he and “ other so-called ‘negroes’ go 10,000 miles away from home, here in America, to drop bombs and bullets on other innocent brown people who’s never bothered [them]”(Ali) His words are well-reasoned, with obvious passion behind them. He succinctly says “No, I will not …show more content…
In his “Letters from a Birmingham jail,” MLK pinpoints one of the biggest flaws in the anti-civil disobedience arguments. He states that many people more scrutinze the protest more closely than the “conditions that brought about the demonstrations.”(King, Jr) He calls this argument a “superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes.”(King, Jr.) MLK understood that he and the people who stood with him were breaking the law. Instead of denying that fact, he simply argues that the laws in place are unjust,and that he is unable to follow laws that target and marginalize people. Neither MLK nor Ali were saying that it’s inherently ok for citizens to disobey laws or that the government's laws should not by respected. They stood against laws that unfairly targeted a certain group of people. In Birmingham the peaceful protests were met with violence, high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs were used on men, women, and children. The public was confronted by these images and things finally began to change, voting and segregation laws
Famous boxer Muhammad Ali peacefully protested the Vietnam war and the draft be simply refusing to go to war. He didn’t try leaving the country or going to college to avoid the draft. Instead, he made powerful statements explaining his thinking. He questioned the way things were, questioning why he and “ other so-called ‘negroes’ go 10,000 miles away from home, here in America, to drop bombs and bullets on other innocent brown people who’s never bothered [them]”(Ali) His words are well-reasoned, with obvious passion behind them. He succinctly says “No, I will not …show more content…
In his “Letters from a Birmingham jail,” MLK pinpoints one of the biggest flaws in the anti-civil disobedience arguments. He states that many people more scrutinze the protest more closely than the “conditions that brought about the demonstrations.”(King, Jr) He calls this argument a “superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes.”(King, Jr.) MLK understood that he and the people who stood with him were breaking the law. Instead of denying that fact, he simply argues that the laws in place are unjust,and that he is unable to follow laws that target and marginalize people. Neither MLK nor Ali were saying that it’s inherently ok for citizens to disobey laws or that the government's laws should not by respected. They stood against laws that unfairly targeted a certain group of people. In Birmingham the peaceful protests were met with violence, high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs were used on men, women, and children. The public was confronted by these images and things finally began to change, voting and segregation laws