My Thoughts
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Is Civil Disobedience Ever Justified?
When you think of civil disobedience, what do you think of? Do you think of someone like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber or maybe you think of people standing around holding signs to protest war or abortion, or maybe you think of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement? Most of the time when people think of civil disobedience the categorize it as either violent civil disobedience or nonviolent civil disobedience.
Actually, according to an encyclopedia civil disobedience is “refusal to obey the demands or commands of a government or occupying power, without resorting to violence or active measures of opposition”(Civil Disobedience 1). However, for the sake of consistency with usual references this paper will refer to civil disobedience as either violent or nonviolent even though violent civil disobedience is not actually civil disobedience. In many cases, civil disobedience is necessary to get ones point across. However, it is always best to use nonviolent civil disobedience if possible. On occasion, it will be necessary to use violent civil disobedience. This should always be a last resort and it should never be your goal.
As a Christian, some of my reasons for civil disobedience may be slightly different from those of others.
As John Frame said,
For Christians (I can write only from a Christian point of view, for my heart belongs to Jesus), moral obligations come ultimately from God. Thus, civil
disobedience is necessary when there is a conflict between the law of God and the laws of human beings. (Frame 1)
Many times it is necessary to use civil disobedience so that one can continue to answer to a higher authority, thought if possible we should follow the Bible’s teaching to obey those in authority over us because they are place there by God. However, when in comes down to obeying God or man I as a Christian must obey God over any earthly, that is to say, imperfect and fallible authority.
On any occasion that it becomes necessary to use civil disobedience there are many reasons that are logical to Christians and non-Christians alike as to why you should use nonviolent civil disobedience over violent civil disobedience. One reason is that nonviolent civil disobedience is almost always the best way to get results. Another reason is that if you use violent civil disobedience you may actually hurt your cause rather than prove your point. If you want proof that violent civil disobedience can hurt your cause, examine the pro-life movement. Many of those who are pro-life do not agree with those who use violent civil disobedience, but whenever someone says they are pro-life they are automatically associated with those who try to prove their point by murdering the doctor who gives the abortions or by blowing up an abortion clinic. It is hard to agree that killing babies is wrong when the people who say that seem to think that it is perfectly acceptable to kill the doctors who give abortions and try to blow up the clinics without any thought about they amount of people they hurt. It is because of these people that the pro-life movement has not been successful. Another case in which violence caused a situation to become much more escalated than it should have been was just before the civil war. A man by the name of John Brown used violent civil disobedience to try to stop slavery. He even went as far as to take ever Harper’s Ferry Virginia (an area that is now West Virginia but it was part of Virginia at the time of the incident) this not only failed to prove his point but also escalated the situation and caused a Civil War battle.
Many people say that nonviolent civil disobedience is no longer practical or that it does not accomplish anything, when in fact it is a very useful tool. Take for example Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, King used nonviolent civil disobedience to great success. The world would not be the place it is today without his efforts on behalf of African-Americans. King was one of the few Civil Rights Leaders who realized that both African-Americans and whites needed to work together peacefully in order to bring about change.
Some people will even argue that nonviolent civil disobedience is outdated. All they would need to do is go in to Washington DC, any day and see the amounts of people who spend their day outside of the Capital Building protesting. Some of these people are protesting things like the budget in congress while others are protesting things like war. It is quite amazing what people come up with to protest. One day, about a year ago, I was there watching the Senate debate about declaring war on Iraq and I saw people protesting everything from going to war to someone protesting protesting.
There are some cased where violence is the solution. After all peaceful attempts have failed some times it is necessary to resort to violent civil disobedience. We as Americans should know this more than some other countries, if it were not for the violent civil disobedience of the Revolutionary War we would still be part of England instead of the most powerful country in the world.
A more modern example of the necessity of violent civil disobedience is what is happening in Chechnya(also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia). When the Soviet Union began taking over countries one of the first to be taken over was Chechnya. After the U.S.S.R split up and countries started to leave and become their own country again, Chechnya was one of the few that was not allowed to leave and become its own country. Chechnya after many years of peaceful attempts has resorted to using violent civil disobedience to attempt to once again become its own country. There is constant fighting between Chechnya’s “rebels” and Russia’s Soldiers. Russia even went as far as to gas a movie theater full of people. Those in Chechnya who are working to get there freedom back live very dangerous lives, and yet it is no more dangerous for them than it is for anyone else living there. Those that are in the most danger are lawyers because they have enough knowledge to argue effectively that Chechnya should be allowed it s freedom. In fact so many of the people there have fled to the U.S. that the U.S. is being force to deny them entry or force them to leave. In one particular case a lady (who I know personally) is currently fight the courts to let her stay because she know that as a lawyer she will be killed immediately if she returns to Chechnya.
As I have shown there are many ways to cause change, some may be peaceful while others may be extremely violent. It is sometimes necessary to reason out and decide which is the best way to cause change. It is always best to try nonviolent solutions before you resort to violent change.
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
We are turning in our Annotated Bibliography on Monday. I thought I would go ahead and post mine here.
Let’s Put Pornography Back In The Closet: An Annotated Bibliography
1. Brownmiller, Susan. “Let’s Put Pornography Back In The Closet.” Conversations. Ed. Jack Seltzer. New York: Longman, 2003. 522-5.
In her article, Brownmiller lays out an argument that involves some of the history free speech and some of the groups that have used it to further their cause, something that in my opinion does nothing for her argument. I feel that she should have gone strait to the point instead of wasting time with what I think is irrelevant material. I think that the longer it takes her to get to her main point the less effective her argument is. By the time, she got to her main argument I really did not care what she had to say about it. She talks about some of the battles that have been had over books like Ulysses, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the Memoirs of Fanny Hill. She feels that if it were not for the authors of these books and the battles over them, her book, Against Our Will, which contains material that could have been deemed inappropriate, her book would not have been successful. She talks about the fact that “the feminist objection to pornography is based on our belief that pornography represents hatred of women, that pornography’s intent is to humiliate, degrade and dehumanize the female body…”(524).
She believes that the images that are typical in pornography “have everything to do with the creation of a cultural climate in which a rapist feels he is merely giving in to a normal urge and the woman is encouraged to believe that sexual masochism is healthy, liberated fun” (524)
The conclusion that she comes to at the end of the article is that it is necessary for the courts to make a “distinction between permission to publish and permission to display publicly” (525). She does not want to force people to stop making it and looking at she simply wants to make so that it is not displayed in ways that force people to be exposed to it.
Reply To John Irving: An Annotated Bibliography
2. Dworkin, Andrea. “Reply To John Irving.” Conversations. Ed. Jack Seltzer. New York: Longman, 2003. 534-8.
Dworkin is writing this article in response to an article by John Irving called Pornography And The New Puritans. She starts her letter with some general information about herself then moves on to her childhood. She talks about what she did as a teenager and what books that you could find in her home. She then goes on to talk about how even as a teen she noticed the controversy about what is considered obscene. She then moves on to her main argument which is her own personal experiences. She talks about how by the time she was 18 she had been attacked three times. She talks about how her parents did not call the police because they wanted to protect her. She also talk about the attitude of people the second time it happened. She says that she did not tell anyone because she heard jokes about it constantly. The third time was by a two doctors at a prison. She writes about how this time she stops speaking, she says “speech depends on believing you can make yourself understood :”(535). Once she got her speech back, she told people but the doctors were cleared of any charges, despite the fact that it caused her to bleed for 15 days. Later in life, she once again lost her ability to speak this time she was being beat by her husband. She had tried to get help from people but no one was willing to help. Even when she told her doctor, he said he could “write her a prescription for Valium or have her committed” (536). She then gets into her main argument against pornography which is that “men act out pornography” (537). She then goes on to explain that they have acted it out on her and that women’s lives become pornography. Dworkin helped to write the first civil law that was against pornography. This law “held pornographers accountable for what they do: they traffic women; they eroticize inequality in a way that materially promotes rape, battery, maiming, and bondage; they make a product that they know dehumanizes, degrades and exploits women; they hurt women to make the pornography, and then consumers use the pornography in assaults both verbal and physical(537). She concludes her article with “A photograph shields rape and torture for profit. In defending pornography as if it were speech, liberals defend the new slavers. The only fiction in pornography is the smile on the woman’s face (538). In all I felt that she built her arguments effectively and that her article was clear and to the point.
Individualist Feminism: A True Defense Of Pornography: An Annotated Bibliography
3. McElroy, Wendy. “Individualist Feminism: A True Defense Of Pornography.” XXX: A Woman’s Right To Pornography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. 125-45.
McElroy’s main argument is that women should be free to choose. She says that every woman’s voice should be heard. She does concede that one woman’s choice may affect another’s but does not feel that it merits limiting. Her entire argument is that while one may not agree it is her choice and no one else should have any say in it. She believes that pornography is a good thing and that it helps women. She considers it to be freedom of speech. She outlines her points quite clearly, listing the ways that she feels pornography helps women. She the goes into more detail on how and why it is a benefit. She considers it to provide sexual information, allow them to experience things safely, and it gives different information than could be found elsewhere. She argues that Pornography “strips away the emotional confusion” (133) and that it “breaks cultural and political stereotypes” (134). She also believes that it does good in the political realm. She considers pornography to have helped feminism and also to be free speech. She also believes that rather than causing men to act out the things in it she believes that it will keep them from acting out what they see in it. She also thinks that we need to support pornography so that those who work in that field will not be ostracized. She concludes by saying that
"On a political and legal level, the answer is: No form of pornography between consenting adults objectionable. Pornography is words and images, over which the law should have no jurisdiction. On a personal level, every woman has to discover what she considers to be unacceptable. Each woman has to act as her own censor, her own judge of what is appropriate." (145)
While I do not agree with McElroy, her article is well written and she makes her arguments very clear. She is concise in her argument and makes it obvious what argument she is supporting.
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Well, yesterday was just as boring as Monday. We were even given an assignment. That is going to be really boring. We have to bring an article about pornography in to class with us on Friday. I looked through a bunch of articles online but I didn't really find any that I liked. I finally found one in the book. We are going to be doing a debate on pornography on Friday which should be quite interesting.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Yesterday was Library Orientation. It was very boring they basically went through and told us what kinds of resources they have and explained how to find things in a library. The also showed us how to use the library's system. I was really bored mostly because I worked in my school library and in one of the public libraries near my home. I hope that Wednesday is not quite as boring as yesterday was.
Friday, September 19, 2003
On Wednesday and today we discussed a couple of articles about pornography. We discussed an article by McElroy and another by Brownmiller. We spent time analyzing the differences in thought and organization in their articles. We split up in to groups and answered some questions about what we thought the thesises and arguments were in the articles. We have to go to Library orientation on Monday and Wednesday instead of class which is going to be very boring.
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
I got my essay graded yesterday morning at 9am which was much earlier than I wanted to be up considering the fact that I don't have any classes on Tuesdays. I acually did better on the essay than I thought I would do. Of course as usual I had a ton of grammatical errors, oh well, I guess I will have to have some one read over my next one for me before I hand it in.
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Essay Complete
We turned our personal essays in yesterday. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Dr. Thompson had us work on them in class last week. She helped us write our introductions and conclusions. Once we had handed the essays in she had us sign up for a time to meet with her so that we could watch her grade our papers. I met with her this morning at 9am (which is very early for me to be up on a Tuesday since I don't have classes). Yesterday in class we had a debate about Pornography. It was interesting to hear other people's point of view. Most of the class were on the side that it is Ok there were only about 9 or 10 of us who were on the side against it. I think that the class is going to be very interesting. At the very least I think it will give me the chance to find out what other people think about different topics.
