| 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. +1, in other words --dan