Morality of the Law
Civil disobedience is the resistance to unjust laws. Henry David Thoreau sparked this revelation when he wrote "Civil Disobedience." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used many of the ideas of Thoreau to expand on the ideas of civil disobedience when he wrote "Letter From Birmingham City Jail." Henry David Thoreau and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. both used civil disobedience as a way to improve the law and require society to abide by higher morals, but in today's society civil disobedience is used solely to change unjust laws while society lowers their moral standards to that of the law.Thoreau wrote "Civil Disobedience" in response to the American involvement in the Mexican War as well as the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. He viewed them both as immoral and wrong and he believed that if the law "is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law" (Thoreau). Thoreau felt this "agent of injustice" to be America against Mexico in the Mexican War, as well as the slaveholder against his or her slaves by the Fugitive Slave Act. He went so far as to reject the United States government as his government by saying "I cannot for an instance recognize t
When Thoreau and Dr. King lived, some laws were very corrupt and needed to be changed. In today's society the law is not as corrupt as I see it. This is in part thanks to people like Thoreau and Dr. King who changed the law for the better in the past. The problem now is not in the law, but in the individual. The individual is the one that must change. The people are accepting the law as their moral guidelines. If one accepts the law as his moral values he is "resign[ing] his conscience to the legislature" (Thoreau). Thoreau said "law never made men a whit more just" (Thoreau). This says that one must set his or her standards higher than that of the law. One must not ask them self whether or not an action is legal. Rather, the individual must ask them self whether or not what they are doing is morally right or wrong. Some examples of actions that are legally but not morally right include the use of radar detectors and sex before or outside of marriage. Both of these acts are legal, but are they right? hat political organization as my government which is the slave's government also" (Thoreau). Thoreau also said "under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison" (Thoreau). This belief that one must break an unjust law and accept the punishment is the main tenet of civil disobedience. Dr. King, like Thoreau, used civil disobedience as a way of raising the already low morals of the American people. The whites believed that they were superior to the blacks and that they could treat them however they chose, because the blacks meant nothing to them. The whites continued to treat the blacks poorly because they were allowed to do so by law. Similarly as Thoreau did many years past, Dr. King used the law to raise the moral sta
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Approximate Word count = 1210
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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