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本帖最后由 windyvalley 于 2010-4-8 19:47 编辑
ISSUE17 - "There are two types of laws: just and unjust. Every individual in a society has a responsibility to obey just laws and, even more importantly, to disobey and resist unjust laws."
This proposition may seem impractical because justice is in a sense a subjective matter varying according to one’s personal beliefs and interests. Justification towards disobedience may hurt laws consistency and majesty. Anyway, compliance toward the majority’s consensus is the pedestal of
laws.
However, absolute obedience also hurts law itself. For this proposition assumes that all the laws are absolutely just, like the commands of God, needing no melioration or reform, which is ridiculous because justice essentially is a gradual process rather than an absolute outcome. Though laws theoretically builds upon the consensus of its people, and aims at serving for its people, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be destructive. Slavery, apartheid, limited rights to women, and ect.,all these are once legitimate. Without the civil disobedience led by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, leaders in the suffrage movement, Greenpeace and thousands of courageous civilians, Indians may still suffering from the tyranny of England’s rule, black people have to abide by the unjust treatment imposed on them, women without any political right, large masses of jungle forest irreparably being destroyed or even, the most terrible, the outbreak of nuclear war out of interest conflicts between world powers. Facing all these unjust pressing social problems, one can easily concludes that legal means to addressing our needs often fail to work, thus more often than not we need to resort to sit-in, demonstration, non-cooperation or other things like that to promote justice.
However, exhortation on disobedience towards unjust laws doesn’t justify any individual’s defiance of the deserved punishment imposed on him/herself. At this point, confused readers may propose pointed questions as what principle distinguishes deserved and undeserved punishment. Or more essentially, what is the line between just and unjust? Des such a line existed? Actually, though our beliefs and standards of morality changing with time, justice is absolutely not a personal matter. There is always something external against the vicissitude of history, which is love and respect to every individual. Just as the great philosopher Henry David Thoreau puts it, ideally , one should act according to their conscious. Thoreau called for this kind of government, "in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience... in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable". Thus, those who harm others interest just shows his/her hypocrisy when claims that their deserved punishment are against their belief of justice.
In summary, nothing in this world is beyond promotion and so is law. It is every citizen’s moral responsibility to show their dissent towards unjust laws according to human being’s universal principles, or one’s conscious. That is how we make headways in the process of democratization and respect to human rights.
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