The Moral Obligation of Noncooperation with Evil

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The Statue of Liberty stands today to symbolize justice and liberty within the United States of America. Yet, the system of which the American people abide by has been recognized to display an obvious account of misrepresentation, and the opposition towards unjust laws and actions this has led to has made ‘civil disobedience’ remain as a recurrent issue in the society. The purpose of a government is providing benefit for the people by acknowledging what is in the best interest for the population as a whole. Despite this fact, it is a concern for some people that the government rather seems to ignore the significant issues that affect us most, but invests its time and effort into other trivial issues. When moral reasoning should be of the utmost importance, it is shameful that there is not of much backbone in history to support the claim that the U.S. has been governed and been made decisions through it. Thus, although civil disobedience may at first glance be frowned upon, certain circumstances entail objection and action against laws, with the goal to enforce justice and moral foundations for the society. In this sense, two American historical figures, Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau, could be recognized as strong advocates of civil disobedience, because they deemed in standing up for what is right, honest, and morally good.

Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, his most famous social protest, was built upon the original idea of transcendentalism and put into action. His civil acts of defiance were revolutionary since he supported a form of protest that did not incorporate violence. Thoreau’s initial actions involving the protest of many governmental issues, including slavery and finance for the Mexican War, landed him in jail as he refused to pay taxes or to run away. Interestingly, more than one hundred years later, the same issue of civil rights and equality was tearing the United States apart. During this time period, Martin Luther King Jr., who shared some of the same political beliefs as Thoreau, followed in Thoreau’s footsteps and worked to bring about social, political, and economic equality for African Americans by peaceful means. King is spoken highly of today because, simply, he redefined the values of a nation- the way people thought about themselves, about others, about their own lives and of the government by which they were ruled. Such shift in paradigm was necessary to achieve eventual equality in the society, for no significant change could have been gained without first changing the minds of those who opposed against desegregation. He applied this in his compelling letter Letters from Birmingham City Jail, by redefining such basic concepts as a law. In doing so, he also redefined himself, the movement he piloted, and was able to justify his reasons for breaking the law at times.

One of the first places King displayed this was when he discussed the difference between a just and unjust law. Competing views of what were just and unjust laws were also the overall problem of the Civil Rights Movement, a movement of which King was a figurehead for. White supremacists believed the issue was clear and took the perspective that African Americans were a recessive race and should be kept recessive under the law. Civil rights activists believed that all men were created equal and therefore should be equal under the law. In his essay, King said that he must acknowledge that he had broken the law, and encouraged others to do so too. However, this should be done in a way that could show he was still a rational and morally upstanding individual. In order to do this, he differentiated between a just and unjust law, therefore altering his audience’s original interpretation of a law and further supporting his claim on why breaking the law is sometimes justifiable. King said, ‘Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust’. Here, King defined a law to be not just a legal code, but a code based on moral standards as well. While King’s process of making the clear distinction between just and unjust laws is very logical and to the point, to the audience reading Letters from Birmingham City Jail, it would be possible that perhaps the more important factor was the emotional appeal to morality. This ethical side would make it very difficult for readers to disagree with King, since it is a common value shared by most people that a country and its laws should be based on moral values. One could no longer ask another person to follow a law that supported segregation without revealing a lack of moral consciousness. By altering the definition of a law, King turned the illegal and ‘wrong’ act of breaking a law into something necessary, a moral obligation, and in fact, the only honorable option.

A direct comparison between the views of Thoreau and King could be made by relating the content mentioned in both of their works. In Letters from Birmingham City Jail, King described the four steps to a non-violent protest, and the first one is collecting the facts to determine whether an injustice exists. This relates to Thoreau’s critique of an unjust government. Thoreau believed that every machine had friction, yet ‘when the friction comes to have its machine…let us not have such a machine any longer’. In the case of civil rights, such friction created by the government would be the one of racial inequalities. King’s second step was negotiation. Putting Thoreau into consideration, he lived during a time when negotiation was non-existent. He wrote in Civil Disobedience that ‘once a year- no more- in the person of its tax gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it’. For both Thoreau and King, their struggles could not be resolved by simple negotiation. The third step was self-purification. On this stage, the protestors would prepare themselves to be abused, but never retaliate. Thoreau believed that every man should ‘make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it’. He insisted that if every man followed his goal and accepted the punishment, anything would be possible. Regarding his night in jail for not paying taxes, Thoreau said that he felt ‘as if (he) alone of all townsmen had paid his tax’. The last step mentioned by King was direct action. King’s movement relied on the success of direct action, because otherwise the actions would be seen as criminal and would not be recognized at all. Such idea of civil action was taken directly from Thoreau, whose strongest argument was that people were the true power of the government.

In response to King’s statement in Letters from Birmingham City Jail, Thoreau would have argued that unjust laws exist, but not all unjust laws should be fought against. Although it is true that both believed that individuals should do what they believe is right in accordance to conscience and that an individual should refuse to obey any unjust government rule, they had a slight contrast between the ways they viewed the existence of a government. While King stated that there should be some sort of governmental guidance, Thoreau stated that society, when ready, should prevail upon themselves without a government. Thoreau doubted the effectiveness of reform within the government, and by presenting his own experiences, argued that petitioning for change achieves little. Such led to their somewhat different views toward breaking unjust laws. Thoreau believed that ‘if the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go’, but he supplemented this by saying that if the law ‘is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then…break the law’. Through application of this quote, it can be inferred that the ‘friction’ caused and required some to be the agent of injustice, which meant that eventually, both Thoreau and King would agree that an unjust law must be broken.

Ralph Waldo Emerson stated that ‘Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well’. Civil disobedience can be justified in certain circumstances because laws do not always apply equally to every individual. When someone’s rights are being harassed because of discriminatory factors, he or she has a right to react. Acts of civil disobedience will always occur because discrimination will forever exist. Being considerate amongst individuals, groups, or cultures can make a large impact on restoring society’s health. Until the world rids itself of this separation illness, all attempts to initiate a healing process will be impossible. Regarding this issue, King and Thoreau are both significant figures in history who have made a strong impact in how our society flows today. They broke down the barriers of blind discrimination and made all things visible; they knew what was right and just and took matters into their own hands by taking action against society, which benefited everyone in and beyond their time.

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