Impact Of Civil Disobedience

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Governments have existed as long as man has believed he benefited from the cooperation and protection it provided him and his fellow citizens. It comes as no surprise that discontent festers among the people when the government legislates or behaves in a way they oppose; logically, the increase in population and government involvement would create a greater variety of public opinion and a wider gap between the people and their governing body—hence, civil disobedience arises. Civil disobedience, overall, has a positive impact by upholding the right of the people to alter the government when they no longer believe it acts in their best interest; however, the only negative impact of civil disobedience lies in the capabilities of modern technology …show more content…
This concept is one of the foundational pillars of our nation. In a free society, the government is an extension of that society; officials are chosen to create laws and govern in a way that the citizenry consents to. Civil disobedience is one way for the people to show the government that they do not consent to what is being done or how it is being done. In this way, civil disobedience positively effects a free society by defending the principles that first made it a society …show more content…
This is not bad wholly, but what is potentially injurious is the concept that the amount of support for an issue is being hyperbolized through media coverage. This is in no way an attempt to undermine the significance of certain issues and the necessity to cover it; but as it so happens, protests occur most often in cities—where large amounts of people can easily amass themselves for a single cause. It is important for the people’s voices to be heard, but just because four or five cities around the country have protests (for the sake of example, let’s say that makes up one-third of the national population) doesn’t mean the parts of the country not being reported on (the remaining two-thirds) agree—and it also doesn’t mean they disagree. The perfect example would be this last election (after which there were numerous ‘riots’, which are not under the umbrella of civil disobedience but are more like an estranged cousin to it); while plenty of protests against Donald Trump were covered in the news (most coming from urban areas), but this did not accurately reflect how the rest of the nation

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