| In practice, it is pretty obvious that most practitioners of civil
| disobedience believe they are above the law, that they usually *are*
| above the law, and that in particular Swartz believed he was above the
| law, and was shocked to find that he was not.
|
| There might be some sincere practitioners of civil disobedience, but
| Swartz was not, and the big heroes of the civil disobedience brigade,
| Ghandi and Thoreau, were not.


>A long time ago, I spent a couple of weeks in jail for
>trespass (occupation of the site where the Seabrook reactor
>now stands).  Nearly everyone eventually pled not guilty
>with a notable exception: every single Quaker pleaded guilty
>on the grounds that in doing so and only in so doing did they
>bear witness.

However, those Quakers' positions may have been erroneous, based on a misunderstanding of the relevant law.  A person may claim to be 'not guilty' based on the fact that he wasn't there, he didn't do it, etc.  But, he may also claim to be 'not guilty' because what he did didn't constitute a crime, or he was justified based on extenuating circumstances, or he was trying to prevent a bigger crime.

BTW, have you considered the implications of nuclear power, today?  Getting rid of the nuclear waste is still a problem, but now the big environmental problem is claimed to be 'global warming', or 'climate change', whatever they are calling it these days.  The typical twenty-something environmentalist can claim innocence (he was not around in the 1970's), but the building and operation of nuclear power plants was and is definitely a trade-off.  How many millions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere would have been avoided had people not deterred the construction of a more extensive nuclear power system? 
         Jim Bell