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The different opinions about civil disobedience
Arguments against civil disobedience
The different opinions about civil disobedience
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Civil Disobedience: Justified Resistance Should an instrument of God be subjected to the cruel punishment of his corrupt government? Should he obediently condone this gruesome treatment? Or rather than…should he consciously decide to take a stance against this maltreatment? For this creature has inherited the essence of his Creator’s benevolent and intuitive nature during his creation, he possesses the very strength to advocate his beliefs; the very wisdom to enlighten victims robbed of their wonder; and the very courage to construct a better society than the relentless reality that unravels before him. Any morally just citizen should support civil disobedience as retaliation against their tyrannical government. If the people deem their
Oscar Wilde, an Irish author, once suggested that if one were to ever look at the discourse of history, they would find that disobedience is man’s original virtue, and through disobedience social progress is made. The study of history is the study of social progress. Social progressions are the changes that occur in society that progress or improve social, political, and economic structures. Social progress can be achieved in several ways, but just like Oscar Wilde, I believe that disobedience is a valuable human trait that just so happens to be a huge part in the progression our society has made and continues to make.
The telling of this story provokes many questions. Why didn’t God, being all-good and benevolent, "immediately restore His fallen creatures to their original union with...
Chastisement or punishment can be performed in various forms that can produce in a variety of consequences. In J.B., the sudden punishment of God on J.B has caused a commotion in his family physically and mentally. Nevertheless, J.B’s faith does not die and he also continues to fulfill his responsibility as a “puppet” in a play created by God. After the death of his five children, J.B is placid and not abhorring God for his punishment. “God will not punish without cause, God is just.”, said J.B (109). J.B knows that there must be a reason for God to punish him, because God always acts impartially. Ev...
When a citizen abides by the social contract, they initially agree to enter and be a participant of a civil society. The contract essentially binds people into a community that exists for mutual preservation. When a person wants to be a member of civil society, they sacrifice the physical freedom of being able to do whatever they please, but they gain the civil freedom of being able to think and act rationally and morally. Citizens have what is called prima facie obligation to obey the laws of a relatively just state. A prima facie duty is an obligation that we should try to satisfy but that can be overridden on occasion by another, stronger duty. When it comes to prima facie duty, this duty can be outweighed by a higher order obligation or
Civil Disobedience, as stated in the prompt, is the act of opposing a law one considers unjust and peacefully disobeying it while accepting the consequences. Many people believe this has a negative impact on the free society because they believe civil disobedience can be dangerous or harmful. Civil disobedience does not negatively affect the free society in a dangerous manner because it is peaceful and once it becomes harmful to the free society then it is not civil disobedience. Thoreau believed civil disobedience is an effective way of changing laws that are unjust or changing things that as a society and to the people does not seem correct. This peaceful act of resistance positively impacts a free society. Some examples are Muhammad Ali peacefully denying the draft and getting arrested. These men believed that what they saw was wrong and they did something about it but they did it peacefully.
In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr passed away from a sniper’s bullet. He gave us thirteen years of nonviolent protest during the civil rights movement of the 1950’s. Before I can give my opinion on the history of race relations in the United States since King’s assassination in 1968 strengthened or weakened his arguments on the necessity and value of civil disobedience? You should know the meaning of civil disobedience. The word civil has several definitions. “The one that is intended in this case is "relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state", and so civil disobedience means "disobedience to the state". Sometimes people assume that civil in this case means "observing accepted social forms; polite" which would make civil disobedience something like polite, orderly disobedience. Although this is an acceptable dictionary definition of the word civil, it is not what is intended here. This misinterpretation is one reason the essay (by Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849) is sometimes considered to be an argument for pacifism or for exclusively nonviolent resistance”.
‘Are you sure?’ asked the Savage. ‘Are you quite sure that the Edmund in that pneumatic chair hasn’t been just as heavily punished as the Edmund who’s wounded and bleeding to death? The gods are just. Haven’t they used his pleasant vices as an instrument to degrade him?’
Sacrifice within the social context can be transgressed into two aspects, one relating to the offender, and the other being the offended one, God. “If individuals entered a state incongruent with good relations with God, they had to undergo rites to restore them to a normative status” (Davies, 1985;155). Thus the sacrifice encompassed this social dimension. The part played by God in the social ...
Civil disobedience has been around for a long time. In Bible times Christians would disobey laws that would go against their beliefs, such as the law that they couldn’t preach. (Acts 4) Christians still disobey laws in many countries that do not let them practice their faith, some end up in jail or killed.
Civil disobedience is the refusal to obey civil laws in an effort to induce change in governmental policy or legislation, characterized by the use of passive resistance or other nonviolent means. The use of nonviolence runs throughout history however the fusion of organized mass struggle and nonviolence is relatively new.
Comparing the Civil Disobedience of Martin Luther King Jr., Henry David Thoreau, and Mohandas Gandhi
Slezak, P. "Gods of the State: Atheism, Enlightenment and Barbarity." Politics and Religion in the New Century: Philosophical Reflections (2009): 20. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.
By definition, civil disobedience means to actively refuse to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence (Wikipedia 2007). Many of the influential people in history have felt passionately about what they believe. These passions caused them to rebel against a government or authority. Many times they felt so strongly about what they believed and how they were being treated was wrong they became disobedient. They would take physical and verbal abuse for being disobedient but would never retaliate. They believed in what they thought was wrong and tried to change the way they were governed. Albert Einstein once said 'never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.' Albert Einstein's views seem to be reasonable. The claim by Albert Einstein is accurate because people should stand up for what they believe, they should know when they are right and their government is wrong, and they should trust in themselves and their own beliefs.
...y for his nation, state or city. However immoral, this is necessary for the progression and continuation of the area, and can only be achieved through the respect obtained with fear. By tying the church to the government, people expected the government to behave morally and to abide by the rules of God, but often times, an entirely moral ruler will be overthrown.
The question of why bad things happen to good people has perplexed and angered humans throughout history. The most common remedy to ease the confusion is to discover the inflicter of the undeserved suffering and direct the anger at them: the horror felt about the Holocaust can be re-directed in the short term by transforming Adolf Hitler into Lucifer and vilifying him, and, in the long term, can be used as a healing device when it is turned into education to assure that such an atrocity is never repeated. What, however, can be done with the distasteful emotions felt about the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Surely the citizens of those two cities did not themselves directly provoke the government of the United States to deserve the horror of a nuclear attack. Can it be doubted that their sufferings were undeserved and should cause deep sorrow, regret, and anger? Yet for the citizens of the United States to confront these emotions they must also confront the failings of their own government. A similar problem is found in two works of literature, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the book of Job found in the Tanakh. In each of these works a good man is seen to be suffering at the hand of his god; Prometheus is chained to a rock by Zeus who then sends an eagle to daily eat Prometheus' liver while Job is made destitute and brought to endure physical pain through an agreement between God~ and Satan. To examine the travails of these two men is to discover two vastly different concepts of the relationship between god and man.