Oxholm 1 Olivia Oxholm Cole AP Lang October 7, 2012 Civil Disobedience and Letter From A Birmingham Jail Comparison In writing Civil Disobedience , Thoreau attempts to motivate the American people to change. He stresses the responsibility of citizens to protest and take action against corrupt and unjust laws of the government. His angry disposition is obvious from the beginning through the fact that he chooses to start with the statement that “government is best which governs least” and takes it a step further to say that “government is best which governs not at all”. Meaning, that the most ideal form of government is one that enforces the least amount of power over its people. As for Martin Luther King Jr., he also writes to show
The Elizabethan and dramatist view of Machiavelli, at least as a political thinker, is that of a man inspired by the Devil to lead good men to their doom (Berlin, 1979). The most extreme interpretations castigate him as a “teacher of evil,” in the famous words of Leo Strauss (1957: 9-10, cited in Nederman, 2009), on the grounds that he counsels leaders to avoid the common values of justice, mercy, temperance, wisdom, and love of their people in preference to the use of cruelty, violence, fear, and deception (Nederman, 2009). Such interpretations fail to understand the underlying motivations and assertions behind The Prince. In a state of disorder and corruption, it is the duty of the government to implement order to combat this instability. Machiavelli had legitimate reason
The separation of government form people takes place gradually and so intensely. Each step is disguised as a temporary measure or associated with patriotic allegiance, or with real social purpose. The Nazis used crises and reforms are to occupy the people that they can not see the slow motion of the government growing. The pride of or country, with more and more bearing down from authority figures is surely a bad sign of things yet to come. Theres no way of arresting a innocent person and the only power government has on society is to crack down criminals.
Thomas Hobbs -view on human nature -what kind of state should we have (government) - views on freedoms and liberties View on human nature Materialist view on the world Hobbes assumes that, without strong, centralised authority human beings will perpetually be at war with each other where “every man is Enemy to every man.” " The natural state of man's life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". The only reason we form a society (the "social contract") and agree not to harm the other person is to protect ourselves from being harmed by other people. Without government, Hobbes says, life would be "solitary, nasty, brutish, and short." From this, it follows that we are not essentially ethical or "good" people. For Hobbes, ethics is only something that comes with politics, and politics is rooted in selfishness and the desire for self-preservation.
There’s even a term coined “moralistic atheists”. These are the atheist who offended people think that they lack morality by giving up God. It seems Atheists find moral value within the natural world and beings that it possesses, and to respond to the vulnerabilities and capacities in others. The Pope attacked Marxism for opposing religion "as a kind of idealistic illusion to be fought with the most suitable means and methods according to circumstances of time and place, in order to eliminate it from society and from man's very heart." He said atheism" is the ideology of 'the death of man.'
In his eyes the people should support only what they want to support, nothing more or less. Thoreau quotes “ It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend its to his will.” If men in power want war, they will get war. Some say that Thoreau is an anarchist, because of his reference to a government that is best which governs not at all. That is not the case because he makes several references throughout his esssay that he does not wish to abolish government, he just wishes a better one. Here, a quote from Carl L. Bankston the third from “Thoreau's Case for Political Disengagement”, states “Nevertheless , while he would like to see government governing less, he does not carry this to the end of abolishing government.” Thoreau says that slavery and
He cites the existence of unjust laws and declares that we as citizens should not be obligated to follow them. The basis for this argument is that the government is run by a majority with the most power, not the most valid perspective. This is the reason why Thoreau advises citizens to follow what they believe to be right and not embrace what the government says. Thoreau states that is not a man’s duty to pledge to eradicate all wrongs from his country but that it is one’s duty to “wash his hands” of it and to not support the wrong in anyway (page 183 para13). He continues to tell a story of how he used this method to protest the Mexican American War which was being waged at the time the essay was written.
Camus uses the trial and persecution of Meursault to express his belief that the justice system is flawed because of his absurdist ideals that truth does not exist, and human life is precious. In order to reform the justice system, Albert Camus believes that capital punishment needs to be abolished. The trial portrays the absurdist ideal that absolute truth does not exist. This
Locke stands firm in the belief that people can incite a revolution against their government when it begins to work against what is in the best interest of the populace (Locke, p. 112). He places limits on these actions - such as what a conqueror is entitled to and what would justify as tyrannical behavior - but still justifies the right to instigate a shift political power. On the other hand, Hobbes finds private discourse against one’s sovereign to a disease (p. 197). He finds contempt in the populace under the sovereign, noting that most of were incapable of understanding the inner mechanisms powering the sovereign (p. 207). By deeming the collective population incompetent and likening their anti-governmental chatter to a plague, it is not a reach to assume Hobbes would not prescribe a right to revolution.
If it is for selfish, self-serving motives, or to serve in an undeserved, destructive way for others, it is not justified. In the political arena and on a governmental level there is no justification to tell a white lie. When lies are told to a nation the government undermines the society. The lies that are being told by the government can’t constitute as white lies because they are dealing with matters of great magnitude. In the reading “Lies” by John Crawford we read the story of a soldier who is back to war after a leave and he is not only lying to other solders but he is lying to himself.