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for ourselves on which side of the line particular cases fall. There |
is no other way of deciding, since the society's method of settling |
304 |
Ends and Means |
issues has already made its decision. The majority cannot be |
judge in its own case. If we think the majority decision wrong, |
we must make up our own minds about how gravely it is wrong. |
This does not mean that any decision we make on such an |
issue is subjective or arbitrary. In this book, I have offered arguments |
about a number of moral issues. If we apply these |
arguments to the four cases with which this chapter began, they |
lead to specific conclusions. The racist Nazi policy of murdering |
Jews was obviously an atrocity, and Oskar Schindler was entirely |
right to do what he could to save some Jews from falling |
victim to it. (Given the personal risks he ran, he was also morally |
heroic to do so.) On the basis of the arguments put forward in |
Chapter 3 of this book, the experiments that Gennarelli conducted |
on monkeys were wrong, because they treated sentient |
creatures as mere things to be used as research tools. To stop |
such experiments is a desirable goal, and if breaking in to Gennarelli's |
laboratory and stealing his videotapes was the only way |
to achieve it, that seems to me justifiable. Similarly, for reasons |
explored in Chapter 10, to drown the Franklin valley in order |
to generate a relatively small amount of electricity could only |
have been based on values that were unjustifiable both for taking |
a short-term perspective, and for being overly humancentred. |
Civil disobedience was an appropriate means of testifying |
to the importance of the values that had been overlooked |
by those who favoured the dam. |
At the same time, the arguments that lie behind Operation |
Rescue's activities were found to be flawed when they were |
examined in Chapter 6. The human fetus is not entitled to the |
same sort of protection as older human beings, and so those |
who think of abortion as morally equivalent to murder are |
wrong. On this basis, Operation Rescue's campaign of civil disobedience |
against abortion is not justifiable. But it is important |
to realise that the mistake lies in Operation Rescue's moral |
reasoning about abortion, not in their moral reasoning about |
305 |
Practical Ethics |
civil disobedience. If abortion really were morally equivalent to |
murder, we all ought to be out there blocking the doors to the |
abortion clinics. |
This makes life difficult, of course. It is not likely that members |
of Operation Rescue will be convinced by the arguments in this |
book. Their reliance on biblical quotations does not augur well |
for their openness to moral reasoning on non-religious grounds. |
So there is no easy way of convincing them that their civil |
disobedience is unjustified. We may regret this, but there is |
nothing to be done about it. There is no simple moral rule that |
will enable us to declare when disobedience is justifiable and |
when it is not, without going into the rights and wrongs of the |
target of the disobedience. |
When we are convinced that we are trying to stop something |
that really is a serious moral wrong, we still have other moral |
questions to ask ourselves. We must balance the magnitude of |
the evil we are trying to stop against the possibility that our |
actions will lead to a drastic decline in respect for law and for |
democracy. We must also take into account the likelihood that |
our actions will fail in their objective and provoke a reaction |
that will reduce the chances of success by other means. (As, for |
instance, terrorist attacks on an oppressive regime provide the |
government with an ideal excuse to lock up its more moderate |
political opponents, or violent attacks on experimenters enable |
the research establishment to brand all critics of animal experimentation |
as terrorists.) |
One result of a consequentialist approach to this issue that |
may at first seem odd is that the more deeply ingrained the habit |
of obedience to democratic rule, the more easily disobedience |
can be defended. There is no paradox here, however, merely |
another instance of the homely truth that while young plants |
need to be cosseted, well-established specimens can take |
rougher treatment. Thus on a given issue disobedience might |
be justifiable in Britain or the United States but not in Cambodia |
306 |
Ends and Means |
or Russia during the period when these countries seek to establish |
democratic systems of government. |
These issues cannot be settled in general terms. Every case |
differs. When the evils to be stopped are neither utterly horrendous |
(like genocide) nor relatively harmless (like the design |
for a new national flag), reasonable people will differ on the |
justifiability of attempting to thwart the implementation of a |
considered decision democratically reached. Where illegal |
means are used with this aim, an important step has been taken, |
for disobedience then ceases to be 'civil disobedience', if by that |
term is meant disobedience that is justified by an appeal to |
principles that the community itself accepts as the proper way |
of running its affairs. It may still be best for such obedience to |
be civil in the other sense of the term, which makes a contrast |
with the use of violence or the tactics of terrorism. |
VIOLENCE |
As we have seen, civil disobedience intended as a means of |
attracting publicity or persuading the majority to reconsider is |
much easier to justify than disobedience intended to coerce the |
majority. Violence is obviously harder still to defend. Some go |
so far as to say that the use of violence as a means, particularly |
violence against people, is never justified, no matter how good |
the end. |
Opposition to the use of violence can be on the basis of an |
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