Jacob Appelbaum in Germany
Ulex Europae
europus at gmail.com
Thu Jan 2 17:53:57 PST 2014
At 04:38 PM 12/31/2013, James A. Donald wrote:
>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.
You seem to be laboring under a pernicious misapprehension: that there
is a legitimate mandate to obey laws that are unconstitutional and/or
unjust. There is a mandate, but it is just as illegitimate as the
unconstitutional or the unjust law.
>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.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that, but if you mean what I
think you mean, then my money says you are wrong about it as well.
--ue
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