Resolved: In a democracy, Civil Disobedience is morally justified.

Hello, I am Sam Zack and I will be the affirmative for the resolution that "in a democracy, civil disobedience is morally justified". I would first like to start off talking about what civil disobedience is. Civil Disobedience is defined as the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government, or of an occupying power. It is one of the primary methods of nonviolent resistance. There have been and continue to be serious disputes over exactly what the term "civil disobedience" means. Some scholars dispute whether conduct that seeks to be considered civil disobedience must even involve illegal activity. The disputes are so wide ranging that there is no one clearly recognized definition of "civil disobedience" in use; the term has a multiplicity of meanings. My value premise is morality, and my value criterion is the safety of the people. It is moral to be safe, and safety is important to everyone. My first contention is that civil disobedience is justified due to the fact that it is a non-violent event. Edward DeForrest from Gonzaga University School of Law states that civil disobedience must be predominantly non‐violent. This requirement is necessary to distinguish civil disobedience from acts of overt terrorism or revolution. Acts of direct and intentional violence result in the deliberate destruction of the social order by shattering the basic right to security of person that each member of our society should enjoy. In fact, Gandhi, who led the nonviolent resistance movement against British colonial rule in India during the first half of the 20th century, recognized this point. He based his insistence on non‐violence upon it. He once wrote, "I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non‐cooperation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence." Civil disobedience is one step below revolution, which most make a mistake thinking that it is another form of it. Civil disobedience attempts to awaken the government, and the majority of society, to a right understanding of justice and the common good. It is not an attempt to challenge the very existence of government; rather it is an attempt to challenge a particular law or action by the government. By using violence, however, protestors attack the government's very existence. Matthew Hall from the University of Mississippi School of Law states that this component of the philosophy plays a crucial role in ensuring that civil disobedience poses little threat to social order. Because of the inevitable tension inherent in illegal protest, disobedients must not only eschew violence at the outset of their actions but also assess their ability to remain peaceful given the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their conduct. My second contention is that Civil disobedience has been an important catalyst for change and is part of America's heritage and history. The Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that throughout history, acts of civil disobedience famously have helped to force a reassessment of our society's moral parameters. The Boston Tea Party, the suffragette movement, the resistance to British rule in India led by Gandhi, the US civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and others, student sit-ins against the Vietnam War, to name a few, are all instances where civil disobedience proved to be an important mechanism for social change. Why talk about long ago, before there were even laws against most offenses that civil disobedience can be against. The civil disobedience of the civil rights movement of the 1960s is well known. Not only were local segregation laws violated, but when people engaged in "sit-ins" in 1960 and 1961 to protest racial segregation, they were in violation of recognized federal law, as discussed in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883. The nation soon recognized that these violations of law were honorable, and that punishment of people seeking to support the principles of the First Amendment of the Declaration of Independence was wrong. My third and final contention is that civil disobedience is justified because everyone who conducts civil disobedience has the same basic human rights in a democratic society. If we don't protect the human rights that we have, everyone won't be equal. Here is where the "moral" part ties itself into this subject. It is moral for everyone no matter what age, race, gender, or anything that can be a reason to dismiss someone from something, to have a say. Human rights are codified in the laws of a society. Further those same laws represent the morals of the society since the majority of a society will want its beliefs to be expressed in the laws. Therefore, by protecting human rights we uphold the ideals of a democratic society. Let me add on that without human rights, people are open to oppression from others. If a democracy allows for people to be oppressed then the whole reason for creating a government would be pointless. Civil disobedience shows that we are a democracy because the people have the ability to protest the government. The people wouldn't be in control because they wouldn't be allowed to protest the government that is made for, from, and by them. The government will have more control without civil disobedience, therefore making the government not as democratic, and then it would be harder to have more human rights with more control since the people would be prone to oppression from the government. Thank you. I have sources that are cards for debating... and have no idea how to put them online from word documents to make public.