Seven Arguments Against Civil Disobedience

Peaceful resistance to laws has the possibility of having a positive or negative impact upon a free society depending on the situation, but throughout history it has been proven that more often than not civil disobedience has brought positive change. It all depends upon circumstance when deciding whether or not something can be good or bad for a society and this includes civil disobedience. While it has impacted our society positively, there are ways for it to be abused by the masses in order for them to get what they want or for the result to turn out as less than desirable, though it is unlikely that it would ever work out that way. For example, Cohen states in Seven Arguments Against Civil Disobedience that one of the arguments …show more content…
People do not band together against their government because they do not respect it and it is not often that one person rallies a group of people in order to achieve their own goals in a free society. Both of these situations and more are hypothetical and only take into account a pessimistic view of human nature. Civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi were not selfish people who protested in order to get what they want, rather they strove to get what oppressed groups of people desperately needed and desired- to be treated as equally as their White brethren. This is far from a selfish request. After the Civil Rights Movement, the United States became a better country and free society. It is also important to remember the American colonists’ civil disobedience in response to the English government’s tyranny. The colonists protested because they wanted to change a law that they knew was unfair. This is the purpose of civil disobedience in a free society, to appeal to a higher authority to change what the people believe is in need of revision or