Disagreeing with laws and upholding laws and arguing they should be upheld

the people, and their elected legislators have a responsibility to alter or abolish unjust laws. but. law-enforcement personel have the responsibility to enforce all laws currently in use. lawlessness helps no one.

it's not about building consensus. it's about demonstrating the wrong that is being perpetrated. most unjust laws have been ignored prior to the disobedient action dealing with them.

that too.

that's pretty much the gist of it. but they aren't permitted to express political opinion while in uniform. unfortunately, there's often an overlap and it's not always easy to tell. sure, you refuse to rape the girl in the camp with a machete, but when your job is to arrest the man stealing water because the government aid prevented the emergency relief water from coming, you kind of have to do it.i recently took the foreign service exam. if i pass this part and then the oral and i receive a commission, i will be banned from expressing public disapproval for any foreign policy decision. i really don't know what to do about that. is the internet safe enough? no. but that's the responsibility that i will accept if i am commissioned. i will not just a citizen, i will be a representative of the government and specifically of the state department. i will be a target to those who seek to express something to the government and i will be a mouthpiece for that body. he was a private citizen, as far as i know. the problem is that their defiance may put lives at risk. it seems very simple, but it's not.

moreover, our system of judicial review half depends on civil disobedience. i can't think of anything that better describes the whole of american history.

we also, at least theoretically, maintain the right to violently overthrow our government. that sounds easy enough, but with a population as big as ours, we have a lot of idiots... unfortunately, sane people here tend to not vote. the same reason the church used to support the legalization of abortion and then turned tail when it finally happened. idiocy.

no. most of the sane people are too lazy to do that either.i think the problem is that we have this cowboy self-identity (i say we...) in which we are islands and nothing affects us. voting doesn't matter because my vote doesn't count and they wouldn't listen to me and the laws don't really affect my life anyways.it's a disease.Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.

no.also, what does democracy have to do with a discussion about the us?Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.

you will kindly recall that citizens don't vote for amendments.our representatives listened to the reactionary teetotalers and thought it would be better for society if we didn't drink. they quickly realized that it created more crime and didn't solve the social ill.Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.

but, more to the point. the point of democracy is to preserve the rights of the individual. if individuals are not being represented, they need to make their plight apparent. if you're going to ask why we were so insane as to do "X" you'll need to understand how our government works. you chose to discuss american prohibition. it's a faulty principle. you chose to discuss american policy.

naturally. but that's very different than purposely not enforcing certain laws in direct opposition to vocal political turmoil. you know how they had to call in the national guard to escort students into school against the will of the people and the local authorities? yeah. that's a bit different than "you know what? let's not bug all teenagers' bedrooms to see if they're having under-age sex."

actually, yes. you need to understand the system you're going to deride before you do so. i didn't give you any examples. i was responding to the discussion at hand.

arresting a man stealing water and turning thousands of people over to a genocidal mob after lying to them and telling them they were being taken to safety are entirely different things. i don't anticipate much trouble speaking only english and french and being a political analyst. i don't. i quite agree. it's nasty territory considering i have serious problems with authority. i know when to do my job. but i know it won't be easy.

we were kind of founded by a bunch of lunatics who wore wild animal skins and didn't bathe for years at a time. it depends on what the "teeth" would result in, and what the disobedience has resulted in, and whether the law has a chance of actually accomplishing the social goal it's set out to fix and whether they've realized that the social goal they were attempting to achieve is better reached by some other means.lets talk about teen pregnancy.we have four possible ways to solve teen pregnancy:1. teach abstinence; pray for the best.
2. criminalize teen sex and enforce with draconian and perverse techniques.
3. mandate and enforce mass birth-control techniques among teens, violating their privacy and potentially their health.
4. teaching responsible sex-ed and ensuring that all birth-control measures are safe, affordable, and accessable regardless of age or marital status.all of these are "reasonable" methods or prevention. they could potentially reach the goal. but some are not efficient and the rest are... obscene. however, they have pretty much all been utilized in this country at various times and in various groups (though not necessarily for the cause of teen pregnancy).sometimes legislators make a choice and non-compliance demonstrates that they made the wrong one.