Civil Disobedience and Dissent (Essay Sample)

Civil Disobedience and Dissent
Civil disobedience is the refusal to follow a policy or obey a law that people believe to be unjust. Its practitioners base their actions on their moral rights and use nonviolent methods. They passively resist in bringing public attention to the injustice therefore, risking punishment. In the modern world, people conduct street marches, demonstrations, occupying buildings, economic resistances, and strikes. Civil disobedience dates back to biblical days and classical times.
Henry David Thoreau coined the term in his essay in 1848. He refused to pay the state poll tax that the American government implemented to prosecute a war in Mexico. People engaging in civil disobedience appeal to a higher law, the natural law, divine law of God, or some moral thinking CITATION Joh71 \l 1033 (Rawls, 1971).
In his essay, "Civil Disobedience" Thoreau wrote that people should use their authority and independent power in which the state gets its authority to identify injustice and bring reform. He claims that a person who gives the government its power should follow his or her conscience to follow justice. Through history, the works of civil disobedience has led to a change in society’s moral structures. A few people in the world are willing to serve their societies with their consciences and those who do, governments and states treat them as enemies CITATION Tho49 \l 1033 (Thoreau, 1849).
The works of Henry Thoreau helped in many civil outcries through the years. These include; the suffrage movement, Gandhi led resistance to British rule in India, US civil rights movement by Martin Luther King Junior, and the apartheid resistance in South Africa. These are among the instances that civil disobedience outcry led to social change.
There are concepts of civil disobedience that make it justifiable in breaching the law. People regard it more morally defensible than any other form of protest. These include conscientiousness, which is the moral conviction, seriousness, and sincerity they use to breach the law. The breach of law is mostly due to a higher calling, self-respect, and their perceived interests of how the society should run. They draw attention to laws they think that require abolition or reassessment CITATION Kim12 \l 1033 (Brownlee, 2012).
Communication, civil disobedients seek to draw public attention to the issue and therefore, instigate reform to the policy. People in civil disobedience have both forward-looking and backward-looking aims. Forward-looking aims at bringing a lasting effect in the policy by either abolishing or reforming it. Backward looking in order to condemn and move away from the conduct or law. Civil disobedience can be direct or indirect. They can either breach a law that they oppose or breach a law they do not oppose in order to oppose another policy.
Publicity, civil disobedience is never secretive or covert. They conduct this openly, in public, and in fair recognition by public and legal authorities. However, publicly announcing strategies to breach the law can undermine communications. Sometimes covert disobedience is preferable to public communication. Publicity and openness come at the cost of halting these efforts and frustration; however, they show willingness to deal with the authorities fairly.
Non-violence seeks to combat the negative effects of breaching the law. Non-violence combats the direct effects of violence. It does not carry with it the risk of antagonizing potential allies or confirming the antipathy of opponents. It attracts the attention of the public and denies authorities any excuse to us violent measures CITATION Joh96 \l 1033 (Rawls, 1996).
Dissent on the other hand is a disagreement to the policies at hand. Here a person who commits an offence does not wish to communicate with society or the government. A person wishes to benefit or not suffer from his or her actions. Civil disobedience and dissent are similar and are not similar in some ways.
Both activities share in communicative and conscientious demonstration of protest. They both seek to bring a lasting change in the policy through fair and moral dialogue. They both seek to raise awareness and attempt to educate. Justification in civil disobedience comes up when it is morally wrong to breach the law, while for legal protest the same does not apply.
Differences include legal protest. Dissent lies within the borders of the law while civil disobedience does not lie within the same borders. Secondly, rule departures. In dissent and civil disobedience, both activities require a dissociation and departure from certain practices and policies. In addition, both require communication but their audiences differ. The identity of the practitioners differ in which in legal protests disobedience is an action citizens undertake while in legal protests are actions state agents undertake CITATION Hug61 \l 1033 (Bedau, 1961).
Moreover, the practices differ in their legality. The extent of a dissent breaching the law is unclear. However, civil disobedience involves a breach of the law that is in books. In addition, unlike in civil disobedience where those who breach the law are at risk of sanction, the same is not true for dissent.
Conscientious objection; a dissenter believes that the law morally prohibits him or her to ...