How are the people, oppressed by others and by the government, supposed to react? Certainly, they do not enjoy being treated unjustly, however, they should still obey the laws. Is it to the laws of the land that command total submission or to his convictions by which he is convinced that the system is totally unjust? Therefore, how should citizens defend their liberties, without using violence or disobeying the law, if they think it’s unjust? If an individual obeys the law, he would automatically be thought of supporting the unjust system but in case he does not, he would be accused of disobeying the law. There are various controversies about whether violence is justified when liberty is threatened. Throughout history, people have had numbers of arguments on this topic.
Civil disobedience is usually thought to be an “illegal activity undertaken to protest laws that
are regarded as unjust” (Schlesinger). In order to eliminate injustice, or at least the most unjust law in the system , people may start disobeying that particular law. Thoreau, Gandhi, and King each were closely related on the concept of civil disobedience, they all thought that the government was in need of fundamental transformation. However, they did support the non-violence movements. I would not say that this was very pretentious--their resort to nonviolence did reflect their morality and religious judgements ,but this is not accurate enough to work one hundred percent. Some people think of civil disobedience as something that must be limited, no one knows to what extent or degree, civil disobedience is always in search of limits.
The tactic for violation of rights should be openness, because stimulated public is the purpose of civil disobedience. Unjust law...
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Utilizing paradox, Chavez describes the effectiveness of nonviolent protest to his audience. Recalling the achievements of MLK, Chavez claims that King “learned how to successfully fight hatred and violence with the unstoppable power of nonviolence.” This quote demonstrates
In the article, published on the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez invokes the ideas of Dr. King and advocates for nonviolent resistance. Utilizing a determined tone throughout, he asserts that nonviolence will accomplish the goals of civil rights activists. By using contrasting diction to distinguish nonviolent action and violent action, he is able to reason for nonviolent virtues. With the use of rhetorical strategies, Chavez is able to drive his argument for nonviolent resistance. Chavez begins by recalling the power of nonviolence as demonstrated by Dr. King, who lived and taught essential ingredients for active nonviolence until the day he died.
In Cesar Chavez’s article “He Showed us the Way”, Chavez talks about Martin Luther King’s practices, how he stands with his nonviolent teachings and how king believed hate cannot driven out hate. Chavez explains how being nonviolent helped many members of the Civil Rights Movement get what they wanted. Throughout the article, Chavez uses religious and historical allusion, to show how nonviolence can be the best route to achieve what they want.
In Cesar Chavez’s article, he uses many rhetorical devices to help give the reader a better understanding of how important nonviolence vs violence is. Chavez explains how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi have endowed reasons of nonviolence worth following.
Justice is often misconceived as injustice, and thus some essential matters that require more legal attentions than the others are neglected; ergo, some individuals aim to change that. The principles of civil disobedience, which are advocated in both “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. to the society, is present up to this time in the U.S. for that purpose.
MLK Jr. Apostle of Militant Nonviolence. Everyone that has been through the American school system within the past 20 years knows exactly who Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is, and exactly what he did to help shape the United States to what it is today. In the beginning of the book, Martin Luther King Jr. Apostle of Militant Nonviolence, by James A. Colaiaco, he states that “this book is not a biography of King, [but] a study of King’s contribution to the black freedom struggle through an analysis and assessment of his nonviolent protest campaigns” (2). Colaiaco discusses the successful protests, rallies, and marches that King put together. .
Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.’s essay “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience” has two main features. The first feature of King’s essay is a call for action; action to bring about change. The second feature, the more easily viewed feature of this essay is a call for a specific type of action to bring about a specific type of change. The change King wishes to bring about is a peace and equality brought about through non-violent actions.
Until the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his life’s work was dedicated to the nonviolent actions of blacks to gain the freedoms they were promised in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 by Abraham Lincoln. He believed that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (King, 1963). These injustices had become so burdensome to blacks that they were “plunged into an abyss of despair” (King, 1963). The nonviolent actions of the sit-ins, boycotts, and marches were so the “individual could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths…to help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism” and ultimately lead to “inevitably opening the door to negotiation” (King, 1963). Not only was King’s approach effective with the older black generation, it was also successful with white people. They did not feel threatened when approached by King. White people gained a sense of empathy towards the plight of black freedom as King’s promise of nonviolence did not threaten their livelihood. Malcolm X viewed the world similarly to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., however; his beliefs to changing the status quo were slightly different from his political counterpart. Malcolm X realized that “anger could blind human vision” (X, 1965). In realizing this, X knew that in order to achieve racial freedom blacks had to “forget hypocritical politics and propaganda” (X, 1965). While Malcolm X was more so an advocate for violent forces against white people than King, X merely used force when it became necessary for defense. According to X, “I don’t go for non-violence if it also means a delayed solution. I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to American black man’s problem” (X, 1965). However, this le...
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 the Theory of Justice by John Rawls, he defines civil disobedience,” I shall begin by defining civil disobedience as a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government”.
In his magazine article, civil rights leader and social activist, Cesar Chavez, discusses nonviolent ways to further the civil rights movement and eliminate the racial inequalities that exist in the world. Through the use of rhetorical aid, including the aid of repetition, Chavez sets a powerful and inspiring tone in order to convey his message to the audience: nonviolence overcomes violence.
Comparing the Civil Disobedience of Martin Luther King Jr., Henry David Thoreau, and Mohandas Gandhi. From the onset of man fighting for freedom or his beliefs, the question has always been whether one person can make a difference using words rather than wars. Philosophically, the concept of civil disobedience would appear to be an ineffective weapon against political injustice; history however has proven it to repeatedly be one of the most powerful weapons of the common man. Martin Luther King Jr. looked at the way African Americans were treated in the United States and saw an increase in inequality.
Suber, Peter. " Civil Disobedience." Earlham College, 1999. Web. 18 Dec. 2013. .
Throughout his education, Martin Luther King Jr. tried to find a way to demonstrate his belief of racial equality with the most effective means possible. He quickly realized that the best strategy to end segregation was to use nonviolent forms of protest. At Crozer, Morehouse and Boston University, he studied the teaching of Mohandas Gandhi, who used nonviolent methods to help India claim its independence from Britain. King read several books on the ideas of Gandhi, and eventually became convinced that his methods could be employed by African Americans to obtain equality in America. King knew that any violence on the part of African Americans would lead to violent responses from segregationists, which would lead to injury or maybe even death for his followers. He had to teach his followers not to respond violently to cruel attacks from segregationists. King decided to sponsor workshops to train African Americans in nonviolent beh...
In Martin Luther King Jr.’s essay entitled The Ways of Meeting Oppression he argues that the only true way to be free from oppression is to employ non violent means. Martin Luther King Jr. is a civil rights leader who led the civil rights movement in the 1960s and was undoubtedly the leader of that era. His work led to great change in the United States for the betterment of all minorities such as the March on Washington and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. His list of accomplishments is nearly endless. His work describes common methods of dealing with oppression on a societal level. He argues that those that chose to merely accept their circumstances as something ironclad, unable to be shaken from its throne of violations of human rights and disregard for life of fellow man. This mindset merely coagulates the oppression in the mind of future generations rather than dethrone it. The other most common method is through physical violence, which leads to the abused people to be treated even worse once the rebellion is quelled. King's use of rhetorical devices as well as their context in his essay paint a strong argument that the way that the oppressed deal with their