Arguments Against Civil Disobedience

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For most Americans, to live in a communist government would not be ideal. If there were plans for communism in our government, we would all come together and fight it, but that would break the law, even if it is unjust. The same logic applies to all who use peaceful resistance, which is needed to positively impact a free society. Shown through the treatment of minorities and the true feelings behind civil disobedience, peaceful resistance is undoubtedly detrimental to many causes.
As Carl Cohen wrote many rebuttals in “Arguments Against Civil Disobedience” addressing the issue of civil disobedience, he had a continuous theme of the true meaning behind it that should be highlighted. Cohen goes on to explain how breaking the law shows how much …show more content…
The minorities. Cohen even admits that “in some political communities’ democracy, although professed, is grossly imperfect in that large minorities- usually racial or ethnic- are permitted little to no effective voice in framing the laws purporting to govern them. In some cases, members of a highly visible minority may be wholly and deliberately excluded from the law-making process… on purely democratic grounds that he (minorities) has no obligation to obey the laws enacted”. With that, the treatment and governing of people of color has always failed to be equal and just, leading to the imperative resistance. Black Lives Matter used peaceful resistance to bring attention to the issue of police brutality, that led to court ordered decisions such as the requirement to have police body cameras, or lawfully prosecuted convictions of police officers that unjustly murdered unarmed men. Their protests even led to resignation or firing of prejudice or naive men and women of high authority. As Shaun King wrote for the New York Daily News, “this movement was formed to protest unjust extrajudicial murders. The movement is fundamentally an anti-violence movement. Its leaders are peaceful, anti-violence activists… Highlighting the ugliness and injustice of police brutality is not …show more content…
Although there is a slight potential, there is greater potential for the issues being protested to be fixed, or at least negotiated, before the total extreme. In 1964, Chairman Morris Leibman spoke against civil disobedience in his address, calling it a threat to our society. However, he stated in that address that “let there be no question of where we stand on human rights and our rejection of discrimination. Surely the continuing social task for the morally sensitive citizen is to impart reality to the yet unachieved ideal of full and equal participation by all and in all our values and opportunities”, so how can this be achieved? “We must be for equality under the rule of law. We are for freedom under the law, not freedom against the law”, yet what he fails to realize is that when the high courts of this land stand with these laws, civil disobedience is the only way to truly capture their attention to begin to make a change. Taking up the matter only in the courts that oppose or turn a blind eye to these issues will not be enough nor will it show the great number of people that could be behind the downfall of the issue. Imagine if Dr. Martin Luther King only fought civil rights in the prejudice courts of the
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