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Old 02-12-2015, 09:21 AM   #1
SoS
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Resistance: A Moral Right?

So this came up in a lecture I had the other day, the question of whether we essentially can and should resist against the state when it does something we consider unconscionable. Is this an ethical position? If so, how far can we go? Is violent resistance ever moral? I'm not necessarily simply referring to riots and open conflict with the state, but also smaller acts such as industrial sabotage.

Here are a few examples from Ireland in recent years:

As you may or may not know, abortion is completely outlawed in the Republic even in the most dire situations, which has led to massive scandals such as in the cases of Savita Halappanavar and Miss Y. Pro-choice protesters cry out for reproductive rights only to be repeatedly denied by the state. This has led some to take matters into their own hands; importing pills that induce abortion and distributing them to women who need or want an abortion. This is a criminal offence that can result in up to 14 years in prison I believe.

Alternatively, in Northern Ireland, a group of activists infiltrated the Raytheon weapon company's facility, causing significant damage to their systems, and while the group were arrested, they were acquitted of all charges (except one count of theft). The activists acted on information that Raytheon were manufacturing missiles to aid Israel.

Are these people acting ethically? Should they have the right to have done these things? Should they, or other people resisting state activity have the right to do so?

... Discuss.
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Old 02-14-2015, 04:19 PM   #2
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I think you have to be really careful with allowing stuff like those examples. For every abortion-pill smuggler in a pro-life country you can get people in a pro-choice country say sabotaging the power supply to abortion clinics. Ask those two people why they're doing it and the bottom line will be the same; "because I'm right and they're wrong". It's bigotry either way.

I think in any society that can reasonably be described as democratic this kind of anti-state active resistance isn't morally defensible. The point of democracy is the idea that you opinions counts for no less and no more than anyone elses. If a state is doing something and still getting elected in a reasonably democratic society then that implies on a fair balance of opinions yours lost out. By by subverting the laws you're subverting the opinions of the majority for your own minority opinion - that is saying that you opinions is more important or correct that those who voted the other way. That's fundamentally a fascist mindset (imposing your will over the will of the majority). I'm sure there are plenty of other strongly held minority moral views in any given country - let's start with homophobes and white supremacists - whom I'm sure none of use want to give a license to resist what they view as the moral failings of their government.

Someone who takes part in "moral" resistance to a democratically elected state is essentially deciding their opinion is more important and correct than the opinion of other, equal human beings. Just because you don't understand or agree with their view doesn't make it wrong. Rejecting the opinion of the majority as inferior and imposing your will over it are essentially the definitions of bigotry and fascism respectively.

If a state can't be considered reasonably democratic then everything I just said becomes irrelevant and you start with non-violent resistance until it becomes clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that it won't work.
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Old 02-14-2015, 04:59 PM   #3
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Ethics according to who? It seems pretty clear cut to me that those who abide by society wouldn't think vigilantism to be ethical, while those who are doing it definitely think they're in the right.
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Old 02-16-2015, 05:10 AM   #4
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I personally don't subscribe to Virtue ethics and prefer consequentialism myself. Yeah tha "for the greater good" tripe is cliche as fuck, but if a group of people are disenfranchised and historically maligned (the Kurds of Turkey for example), should they have a right to resist the regime's attempts to subjugate them?
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Old 02-17-2015, 12:31 PM   #5
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Im alright with civil disobedience, given that it's the most effective at actually getting things done rather than violent protests after high profile cases and such. Violence gets people nowhere. Civil disobedience ended American segregation and got the nation to actually enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth and related laws. Pro-equality people were peaceful, those who resisted integration were violent mobs, both immediately after the Civil war and in MLK's time. Which side won out?

So, if you ask me, resistance is a right people have, but with rights come responsibilities, and one of the responsibilities in resistance is not making it violent and nasty, but rather doing it peacefully so that people see you as someone making an argument against something they think is wrong and not some extremist. I know Concept said stuff about "imposing your will against the will of the majority," which, yes, it's a fair point. But if you can manage to change the way that majority thinks, and convince enough people until your belief is the majority opinion, and do this through peaceful means and make people Chanhe their opinions by way of logical thought, as people like Martin Luther King Jr. did, then that's a prime example of citizenship.
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Old 02-17-2015, 10:40 PM   #6
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In a democratic society, vigilante actions such as the ones you describe are usually detrimental to the cause they are trying to promote. For example, in the Raytheon example you cite it would be ever so easy for the criminals who carried out that action to be painted as anti-semetic which would be used to further the narrative that all people who are not pro-Israel are anti-semetic and want to see Hamas win. Also, in democratic societies there are better and more effective actions that can be taken to try and change government policy on a specific issue like Israel or abortion such as peaceful protests, letter writing, and donating to various organizations and political campaigns. So no, the actions that you describe are not morally defensible in my opinion.

However, if there is actual oppression happening in a specific country and a group is actively being discriminated against by the government then they are perfectly within their rights to act up, but peaceful methods are often more successful than violent actions. Examples of this include the Civil Rights movement in the United States and the end of Apartheid in South Africa. This is because violence usually pushes public opinion or at the opinions of those in power further away from the group carrying out the violent actions because they now see that group as a threat. Examples of this include Palestine and the Kurds.
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Old 02-18-2015, 06:14 AM   #7
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I should probably clarify that I didn't have MLK and such like in mind when I posted because I don't think they're relevant to the discussion. The civil rights movements response was absolutely the right one and isn't in any way the same thing. If the hypothetical people in the first post protested against action being illegal or arming Israel, that's fine. The correct reaction to thinking society is wrong is to try to change their views, not to decide that yours are so obviously superior that you're going to impose your own laws regarding abortion or whatever on as much of society as you can.
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Old 02-18-2015, 08:00 PM   #8
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I should probably clarify that I didn't have MLK and such like in mind when I posted because I don't think they're relevant to the discussion. The civil rights movements response was absolutely the right one and isn't in any way the same thing.
Indeed you should, but now that you have I see your point a lot more clearly and I have to agree with you. Violently imposing your will over the will of the majority is not only wrong, but a shot in the foot as the majority will only see you, as folks before this have said, as a violent extremist and a threat to their security.

But I wouldn't agree with you that such actions are fascist, however, because in these cases they are people resisting a government that represents a majority. As such, their actions are just illegal and outright selfish. To me, fascism comes into play when a government that supports a minority belief comes into power and oppresses their opponents on the basis of their subscribing to the other side of that particular fence. This is most commonly seen just after an unpopular ruler is overthrown, when the rebels in question are a minority group, and begin to terrorize and threaten those who shared the beliefs of the old government and majority opinion. I'm going to outline an example, but it might get a bit long-winded, so spoiler tag.
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Alright. Welcome to Nation X, the perfect clone of the USA except that people get along on everything except for one thing: Issue Y. Nation X doesn't communicate with foreign countries, so we don't know just what Issue Y is, it could be anything you want. There are two groups in the nation, and only two: Y-favoring, and Y-resistant. 85% of the population is Y-favoring, 15% Y-resistant. Being a US clone, the government is a clear majority of Y-favoring folks. But in this near-utopia, Y-resistant folks find Y-favoring so repulsive that they decide to revolt, and succeed in overthrowing the government. Now in control of the state, Y-resistant rebel governors begin to suppress and oppress Y-favorers. That is fascism. But before the rebels won power, they were selfish jerks who felt that the government should ignore 85% of its people and resist Issue Y. Of course, starting a rebellion is treasonous, so its very severe.

In essence, the line between fascism and being a selfish prick lies in whether or not you are using government authority, whether it actually exists or not, to do such acts. If you, as the government, are denying and suppressing the will of the majority of your governed, that is fascism. If you're going to vandalize an abortion clinic in a nation where the popularly elected government permits abortion, not using any government power, then you're a selfish jerkwad. Fascism is a government policy of suppressing an opposed majority, being selfish is being selfish.

Regardless, the bigotry argument is 100% in line. In fact, it's probably much better to say that in my example above, the Y-resisting group was guilty of bigotry the whole way through the revolt. Fascism is the result of institutional bigotry, in a way.
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Old 02-18-2015, 11:25 PM   #9
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*Shrug* fascism probably isn't the word I was looking for as it's usually used to specifically for government actions but tbh it's a pointless semantics argument. Government is just a group of people that others groups of people largely choose to listen to. I don't see any meaningful difference between one group of people we label "government" being arrogant enough in their minority viewpoint to impose it over the majority or another group we label "crazy idealogues in their garage" doing the same. The former is a fascist government and we'd consider it wrong; the latter is what Josh is describing in his opening post and are acting exactly the same (in my opinion).

I'm of the opinion that for any given individual - me, you, anyone else - almost every single one of our most deeply and fundamentally held beliefs is complete nonsense, but we'll continue to hold them anyway because we're far too biased to accept any specific view we have as rubbish. A large part of the point of democracy is trying to overcome this stupid bias we all have; it renders any given individuals opinions essentially irrelevant, in the hopes that the many and varied extremely wrong positions and the few approaching right ones balance out into some semblance of decency. By choosing to continue to live in a democratic society we implicitly agree to put our own beliefs aside in favour of the will of the majority, and free speech and suchlike gives us the ability to air our views so the majority can make an informed decision. People who can't accept that - like those in the OP - are welcome to leave. The door is over there, I'm sure they can find another country where the majority are forced to march lockstep to views the few agree with.
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Old 02-19-2015, 01:48 AM   #10
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Concept's reasoning (and thus answer to SoS's questions) naturally lends itself towards a follow-up question: is democracy best?

See, the thing is, when democracy is an idiocracy, democracy is patently not best. We have numerous examples of this throughout history. The idiot majority voting in a terrible person to power. The idiot majority voting against a good change. The idiot majority voting to uphold a bad status quo. As an easy enough example, Concept's rationale implies that if 30% of people in a community believe that gay marriage is a-okay while 70% believe it is an affront against God then the morally correct thing to do is to keep gay marriage illegal. Preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty sure modern UPN, with its heavy bias towards LGBT rights and privileges, would be upset by this.

Not long ago, I would have agreed heartily with Concept about the "If you don't like it, get up and leave" approach to democracy. The idea that the minority, rather than enjoying any sort of right to telling the majority how to live their lives, ought to just pack their bags and leave if they don't like it. (Example: gays should move the fuck out of Mississippi if Mississippians decide that they want homosexuality to be illegal.) These days, though, I'm not so sure I still share that viewpoint. I think it's ideally true, but that in practice there are too many legitimate reasons for why people may not wish to or better yet may not even be able to leave their place of residence.

One of the reasons America was created to be a democratic republic rather than a full-on democracy was specifically because the Founding Fathers recognized that the average man was neither wise nor educated. Either/or would be appreciated of the men deciding the laws for the country. The idea was that said decision-makers would be chosen through democracy but that, once chosen, said decision-makers would then make their decisions in a republican fashion. The separation between the people and the lawmakers may have been deemed necessary for other practical reasons as well, but I believe that then as now the biggest reason for it was that the Founding Fathers realized that pure democracy would inevitably result in an idiocracy running the country into the ground. Better to have the top 5%, fairly chosen by the 100%, making the decisions for the country instead of having the entire 100% making them.

So, pulling back to the topic at hand, I don't know that it's fair to argue that civil disobedience is generally wrong and that if you don't like the state's policies then you ought to leave. I think there can be legitimate reasons to remain and fight the laws. And I think the debate then becomes if civil disobedience is ever one of the valid approaches to getting legal change.
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Old 02-19-2015, 07:42 AM   #11
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First off, apologies if my 4am philosophising got excessively ranty.

Just a clarification; the point I was trying to make wasn't "leave if you don't like the states policies" - by ask means stay and fight your corner a la the civil rights movement. It was more that no matter how hard you try, sometimes you will fail to change anything through protests and legitimate debate and voting and so on. If someone can't accept that and their response to losing is to break the other guys stuff or whatever then I think they've crossed a line.

To take Talons LGBT example, I fully support gay marriage (for example) and will vote/argue for it. However much smarter people than me have had every conceivable opinion under the sun on it and I'm not so arrogant as to automatically assume I'm right and they're wrong. Hashing it out via debate means everyonesp opinions - mine included - get extensively sanity checked in the court of public opinion before we start to regulate peoples lives based on them. Civil disobedience removes this safety check and assumes their op pinion is completely 100% flawless. I'm not comfortable putting that faith in anyone, myself included (incidentally this is why I like not living in a republic - voting for your head of state gives them a sense of legitimacy which in turn gives them as an individual substantial actual power). In answer to the latter part of the question "how far would you go for something you truly believed in, and what stops you from going further", I say "because I might be wrong".
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