@ JMeganSnow:
Civil disobedience (CD) is not defined by “sit ins.” They were merely an example of CD. Insofar as *any* action violates the rights of others it is immoral, e.g. people sitting in a private businessperson’s property when he or she tells them to leave. In defense of my argument that CD does not require actions similar to those taken in the civil rights movement, I offer Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.” In it, he tells of when he refused to pay a tax, plain and simple, and no one’s rights were violated.
Please provide an argument as to why the definition of CD necessarily includes violating the rights of others.
@ advocates of the “rule of law” position:
Questions that should clarify this position (if there be any generally agreed upon one):
CD, insofar as it does not violate the rights of another man or woman, is acceptable because one does it while actively proclaiming to a legal representative of some form and/or intending to be caught, and therefore one is not “faking reality” that the law exists?
Breaking the law, as differentiated from CD, is attempting to break a law without intending to be caught?
For proper conceptual analysis, I propose we treat all instances of “breaking the law”, in our theoretical discussion, as those that would not also violate someone else’s rights or be opposed to one’s self interest (not counting the argument that breaking the law is against one’s interests); the rational members of this forum can agree that any action violating the rights of another is immoral, and in this discussion we are particularly interested in the morality of actions that, if a law did not prohibit them, would not be immoral.
My position:
Moral actions are those taken in one’s self-interest. I judge any action as moral to the extent that it furthers the actor’s self-interest, given the context. An easy example to use is taxation. If I did not judge the net negative consequences of getting caught not paying taxes multiplied by the probability of actually getting caught as being greater than the net benefits received from not paying taxes, I would not pay taxes. More simply:
[Cost of getting caught (audit, etc.)][Probability of getting caught] > [Value of taxes][Probability of not getting caught]
When/If this equation ever becomes an equality or the inequality changes, I will not pay my taxes.
Obviously I take a completely economic view on this issue, and I feel that is the only rational position, because one is dealing with an immoral law. There is no such thing as a law that is both “objective” and “immoral”, thus any immoral law is, by definition, subjective; it is subject to the fancy and whim of the lawmaker.
While I can (and do!) speak against such immoral laws, I do not observe their right to exist, and I do not believe that the preservation of one right* (speech) obligates me to follow other immoral laws.
I have two arguments against the “anarchy argument” as well.
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For those of us attempting to achieve anything even close to philosophic rigor, this argument is frankly baseless and without rational defense. Exactly how would my resistance to taxation and other immoral laws result in complete lack of respect of all laws? I respect property rights because they are moral, not because of what the government has deemed “acceptable.” Likewise, I respect all moral laws because of their philosophic value: they are moral. What “Uncle Sam” says about anything is of absolutely no concern to me, and yet, I’m a moral, and mostly-law abiding person (I’ve used firecrackers!). Please defend this transition from breaking immoral laws to absolute anarchy.
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In an attempt to defeat an irrational argument that may be used to defend the “anarchy” thesis, I will take some pre-emptive action. One cannot rationally say that because one individual chose to not pay taxes (or not follow any immoral law) that *all* individuals would also chose similarly. Nor can one say that all individuals *should* choose similarly. To predict that one person’s tax evasion will result in anarchy is historical naïveté: millions of people will not do something even if a few people do it and it is moral. To say, “Well, if it’s right for you not to pay taxes, than none of us should, ergo anarchy” is (aside from being undefended, as I said above) also false. I believe one should break an immoral law only if it is in his or her self-interests, contextually speaking. Right now my “taxation inequality” is not favorable, so I would be acting irrationally to evade taxes. But whether any single individual should do something is completely an individual case. To impose upon all the moral choices of one person, disregarding the context in which the choices were made, is nothing short of an adaptation of Kant’s Imperative.
As for the violent revolution, let me just say this. I am principled, and I will not allow a contradiction; I do not respect immoral law in small instances, nor do I respect it in large. When the benefits of revolution outweigh the benefits of peaceful persuasion (as long as it exists), then we must revolt. The greatest killer of human life in our history has been government (beats religion!), and I’ll point out that I trust my fellow friends more than my congressional representatives.
*If anyone would care to debate this, I’d argue that our right to free speech is not even properly enforced in this country in two ways. One, as long as we lack a consistently defined legal system *no* law can be properly defended by any government official, and as such there is *no* guarantee that the right the law is supposed to uphold will be protected. Second, more practically, there are many, many instances where mere words (aside from “Fire!” or threats) have resulted in fines or prison sentences. Free speech is not as protected as many would like to think.