Dissent IS crime though. For example, stealing is dissent from the accepted notion that property can be owned. It's an assumption so baked into your brain that you accept it implicitly, but it's not a law of physics or anything.
Any deviation from the rules of the system is a challenge to those rules. I think the distinction between crime and dissent in your mind is actually just whether you agree with the person doing it or not.
Civil Rights activists were criminals. Until they weren't.
Dissent IS crime though. For example, stealing is dissent from the accepted notion that property can be owned.
That proves crime is (in some loose sense) dissent, not that dissent is crime.
Besides, stealing generally doesn't come from a dissent about the nature of ownership. The average thief doesn't believe that property can't be owned -- he knows that you own your property, and he intends to make it his property.
Any deviation from the rules of the system is a challenge to those rules. I think the distinction between crime and dissent in your mind is actually just whether you agree with the person doing it or not.
Well no, because:
a) "Rules" != laws" -- breaking "rules" isn't a crime while breaking laws is, and
b) You can quite easily disagree with the law without breaking it. I think it should be legal to serve alcohol to eighteen-year-olds in the state of Kansas, but I've never done it.
Merely disagreeing with a law doesn't lead to eventual change. You have to break it more and more visibly until they prosecute you, and then get enough people to rally around you and win the case, and the appeal, etc.
Merely disagreeing with a law doesn't lead to eventual change. You have to break it more and more visibly until they prosecute you, and then get enough people to rally around you and win the case, and the appeal, etc.
No, that's one way of changing a law, and I generally don't think it's the best. The best way is to go round persuading people of your case.
If you declare that it's morally alright for folks to break laws just because they happen to disagree with them, then the biggest problem you encounter is that folks' opinions on what laws are unjust are often just plain wrong. For instance, if Fred Bloggs believes that it should be legal to beat up queers, then he's perfectly entitled to that opinion, and to try to use his free-speech rights to persuade others that we ought to change the law so that it's legal to beat up queers. But it doesn't make it on some level okay for him to start beating up queers.
Or a more morally neutral example: some people think we should drive on the left, some people think we should drive on the right. But civil disobedience is really bad way to sort that one out.
What do you propose for a group of people who have little to no political power, and are being oppressed by some current law? They can run around telling people their argument all day long, but it is protests, and civil disobedience that have always forced those in power to address their grievances.
In regards to you gay-bashing example, civil disobedience is by definition non-violent. If a law was passed that required people to give gay people high fives, and Fred Bloggs chose to refrain, THAT would be civil disobedience.
I have to disagree with this definition, because it doesn't have to be breaking a law. It just has to be breaking a 'rule'. Breaking a rule doesn't necessarily equate crime.
As an example, it may be a rule to be on the job by 8 am. Being late can get you fired, but in most cases it's not going to land you in jail because being late to work is not illegal.
Any deviation from the rules of the system is a challenge to those rules. I think the distinction between crime and dissent in your mind is actually just whether you agree with the person doing it or not.
Civil Rights activists were criminals. Until they weren't.