Can you use civil disobedience? How.
I want to talk about my thread being locked, for the first time.
I am feeling so special now.
have a sit in
-Imp
Public speech.
Well, to answer the question in the title, there is a short, logical answer: since you cannot do something without doing it, you cannot challenge the authorities without challenging the authorities.
The second question is more complex. Firstly, what does it mean if someone can do something? From what point of view? From the perspective of the law, you cannot use civil disobedience, since civil disobedience means breaking the law, and the very nature of law must forbid breaking the law.
However, the law obtains its authority from the system of legislation. In the case of an internet forum, this would mean an aristocratic system - a selected elite rules as it sees fit. In the specific case of ILP, the system might be described as controlled aristocracy, since the users of the site have the choice to keep using it or stop using it. The ruling elite wants certain kinds of users to stay and others to leave, in order to achieve something - in this case, intelligent discussion (at least, I believe and hope so).
This would imply that the more desirable an user you are, the more you are allowed to bend the rules. Of course, the rules are designed in such a way as to exclude the undesirables by giving a very real reason (breaching of rules) to their exclusion. Therefore, desirables would probably not find themselves in the position to have to breach the rules in the first place.
So, from the point of view of the aristocracy, you should not use civil disobedience.
Now, if you want to know whether civil disobedience can be morally justified, I am too tired to start analyzing that. And yes - I’m currently a tad bored.
Welcome to the boards, Oskari V.
It sounds to me like you’re saying, don’t break the law, just break the rules. Do you mean a protestor should just break the misdemeanor laws and not the felony laws? In any case, it sounds me me like you’re saying, the only way to protest is to get kicked-out; but is the only way to get kicked-out to protest?
I also wonder that one would respond to authority by acting poorly – why would that get anyone enough respect for a hearing, or for personal dignity if some of the laws are good ones. I prefer to try to act as well as I can in combination to speaking truth to power…but it doesn’t seem to work.
So I guess I’ll have to start breaking bad laws – which is civil disobedience. Now to find someone who knows what the laws are, who doesn’t charge a leg for their services.
It is somewhat effective, and helps to further a cause or begin a social movement. but under the current “war on terror”, participating in civil disobedience will get you labeled a terrorist and thrown in prison. Check out what was just passed by congress:
http://www.stopaeta.org/[/url]
The law, as explained, makes it illegal for animal activists to cause over $10,000 of profit loss during their free-speech protests.
Gosh, if that law applied to all free-speech protests, I wouldn’t be able to bomb abortion clinics anymore! 