Word: laws
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Disobedience and Democracy, Nine Fallacies on Law and Order, by Howard Zinn; Vintage Books; 124 pages...
...little book" on civil disobedience earlier this year, it was only a matter of time until someone from the Left would step forward to challenge him. That Howard Zinn was the one who did is fortunate, for Zinn's new book, Disboedience and Democracy, Nine Fallacies on Law and Order, reveals at once some of the best and some of the worst of contemporary radical thinking...
Must we not justify them all? If a student has a right to break the conscription law, does this not give the Klan the right to disobey the Civil Rights Act? There is a confusion here between the tolerance of all speech, and the tolerance of all actions. I would argue that all promulgation of ideas by speech or press whether odious to us or not, should be tolerated without distinction; that we, as citizens, should defend someone's right to speak stupidly (even while we expose that studidity), that whatever "harm" may come from bad ideas...
...thesis, insofar as it relates to this question, is not only that the individual citizen has a duty to act on moral grounds, even if his action is illegal, but that the Court must respect this duty and uphold it. The Court, Zinn says, must "stand for the law sometimes, for justice always." This is an exciting, romantic, beautiful idea: that we might order our society on morality and so live together in peace. But Zinn has not carried his theory to its logical end. If he wants the Court to recognize his right to oppose laws (the draft laws...
Zinn's book, in this sense, is both beautfiul and terrifying. It is beautfiul, because it looks forward to the time when men will base their society upon morality, and justice will at last be united with the law. But it is terrifying as well, because the conditions of the 1960's are too angry, too hostile, too violent to let this work. Zinn is overreaching himself when he asks that the Court stand on his side when he breaks a law, no matter how immoral he may consider that law to be. As long as the law stands...