Civil disobedience
Yesterday, I read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: I wanted to trace its influence upon John Rawls’s theory of civil disobedience. (Had I previously read all of the “Letter,” or just excerpts? I’m not sure.)
What a lovely manifesto. Again and again, MLK extends the olive branch to his opponents, though his own cause is obviously just, and theirs is not. Again and again, he calls for their inclusion in the pursuit of justice, and he says that protests should not be violent.
How unlike what happened today at the U.S. Capitol!
It is not at all clear that today’s demonstrations were for a just cause. The protestors I saw on TV managed only to mumble vague allegations about how the voting machines had been tampered with – allegations that none of them could have known to be true, that none of them seemed even to understand.
And there was no extending the olive branch. No commitment to nonviolence. No humility. No acknowledgment of opponents’ humanity. Just brashness and destructiveness and petulance.
Solomon devised a test to figure out which of two contenders was the child’s true mother. We have a similar test in front of us that can help us to discern who are the real patriots.
Are they the people who’d attack the legislative bodies and procedures to which the citizens’ welfare has been entrusted?
Or are they the people who’d permit a peaceful transition of governance – of care – so that the vessel, creaky and leaky though it might be, could remain afloat with all of its passengers?
What a lovely manifesto. Again and again, MLK extends the olive branch to his opponents, though his own cause is obviously just, and theirs is not. Again and again, he calls for their inclusion in the pursuit of justice, and he says that protests should not be violent.
How unlike what happened today at the U.S. Capitol!
It is not at all clear that today’s demonstrations were for a just cause. The protestors I saw on TV managed only to mumble vague allegations about how the voting machines had been tampered with – allegations that none of them could have known to be true, that none of them seemed even to understand.
And there was no extending the olive branch. No commitment to nonviolence. No humility. No acknowledgment of opponents’ humanity. Just brashness and destructiveness and petulance.
Solomon devised a test to figure out which of two contenders was the child’s true mother. We have a similar test in front of us that can help us to discern who are the real patriots.
Are they the people who’d attack the legislative bodies and procedures to which the citizens’ welfare has been entrusted?
Or are they the people who’d permit a peaceful transition of governance – of care – so that the vessel, creaky and leaky though it might be, could remain afloat with all of its passengers?