Civil Disobedience Paper

Ayinde Hill

Civil Disobedience Paper

        If you are faced with something that goes against your morality, what is your first response to do? For most people their first response is to simply go against this conflicting issue, whether it involves not participating in it or rallying others to go against it as one unit. What if it is a law that goes against your moral standard? Simply disobeying a law is a lot more difficult since incarceration is a possibility. This is a dilemma that people throughout history have wrestled with and have several varying views on. This act has officially been given the name of civil disobedience.

The issue of civil disobedience is a very complex and opinion-based one. Before we can delve into the topic itself it is crucial to fully understand what civil disobedience is. Civil disobedience is the act of defying a specific law or policy due to that law’s confliction with one’s own moral upstanding while still showing respect for the political authority. Now, what does it mean to show respect for the political authority while still disobeying a law? It means that you’re still willing to accept the consequences of breaking said law.  So, if someone is against a tax law, generally the first step of civil disobedience is to cease following the law and then the person must fully accept whatever consequences come from disobeying said law. Civil rights leaders have historically used civil disobedience as a way to publicly voice their opinions about an unjust policy. One of those many civil rights leaders is the ever-popular Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

        As seen by his community driven actions, King had a very public approach towards civil disobedience. He felt that if someone is going to speak out against injustice then they should make an effort to raise awareness about it. King believes in rallying people together to refute this policy and also believes in participating in civil disobedience in large groups to further show people’s dislike of the policy. In his letter from Birmingham jail he writes, “One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”(Abel 487) In this statement King is saying how he feels a person breaking a law due to conflictions with their own morality should in fact go about doing so. He emphasizes the importance of accepting the repercussions that come with breaking this law. However what’s key in distinguishing King’s viewpoint is how he notes the importance of how breaking the law should be done in order to raise awareness to others of the law’s injustice. He says that these actions are actually the highest respect for the law because he feels that by disobeying certain unlawful policies you are promoting a government with fair and reasonable laws for everyone. However, not everyone shares King’s more community-driven approach towards civil disobedience. One notable person is Henry David Thoreau, who had a more self-driven approach towards civil disobedience.

        Thoreau has some slightly different opinions on civil disobedience than King. He believed that the main intention behind civil disobedience was to ensure that you yourself were not participating in a morally conflicting policy then nothing else mattered. He wasn’t worried with how the policy conflicted with other people’s morals or whether or not they took a stand to refute it. Thoreau states, “It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.” (Thoreau 4) Here Thoreau is saying that any individual has no obligation to devote himself towards getting rid of any unjust law because they could have more important matters in their life to focus on. They should, at the very least, make sure that they “wash their hands of” their involvement with the policy. It should also be noted that Thoreau was in no way against deciding to devote yourself towards eradicating the policy, he simply felt it was not something you had to do if you were to disobey this law. He felt that if one people allow themselves to be imprisoned for this policy then other would follow that person’s example and at the moment the government would not be able to imprison so many non-criminally active people. If a person were to develop their own opinion on how to handle civil disobedience, it is necessary to examine the benefits and disadvantages of both Thoreau and King’s methods.