dwc@hou2b.UUCP (D.CHEN) (01/24/86)
here's what i think of the comments so far: > The whole point of civil disobedience is that society > allows enough personal freedom that people can break the > law, and will do it if they have a good enough reason. not really, when you break the law, you go outside all the framework for behavior that is set up by society. what you really mean is that each person has the choice to go outside the rules of society but there are (and has to be) consequences. > ... No one has the *right* to break the law. every one has the right (moral) to break the law. but don't expect the society whose laws are broken to defend your right to do so. if there are other members of society that support you, then you are in luck. >Do you know where the money pledged to Jerry Falwell goes? You'd >better before you decide that no one is getting hurt by this. >I guess you mean physically hurt... i have read that not paying taxes is a form of civil disobedience. i also think that you are hurting people by that (at least that is what the government says). no, the main feature of civil disobedience is NON-VIOLENCE. the bottom line is that any form of civil disobedience will hurt somebody in some way. but you don't stop simply because someone says it hurts. but hopefully, the action and its consequences are well thought out. >...Perhaps I wanted to call in and >pledge money and get a copy of whatever the latest thing is. >My right to do that (yes, we do have *that* right) was taken away >by this guy. lets not debate about RIGHTS in a vacuum. i really cannot see how anyone but falwell and his cohorts was hurt by this action. i can't really say how you would react, but i doubt that i would have been seriously disappointed by not being able to get through to falwell let alone hurt by it (i would however, be appalled to learn that my elderly neighbors had given their life savings to the man). many government agencies take away the RIGHTS of charlatans and con-men to cheat us out of our money. and i think that all of us have complained at one time or another that the government has not done ENOUGH to protect us. i'm not saying that falwell is a charlatan (or maybe i am) but i do feel that the government, which is doing a fair job of protecting us from people who MIS-SELL cars, insurance, phones, and just about anything else, just hasn't done a good job of protecting the people from charlatans who MIS-SELL religion. in fact, alot of the laws seem to protect them (including tax laws). many of the postings have said that this is act is not civil disobedience because it was directed toward an individual (or private enterprise) and not the government. but if you believe that the government has not acted in the best interests of the people, then the action must be taken against the offending party. an example of this is setting up a human wall against bulldozers that are scheduled to destroy a building that you believe is a landmark but the government hasn't protected as a landmark. the people that are being "hurt" by this is action are the people who pay the construction team. but its civil disobedience just the same. >auto-dialer is dialing the wrong number? People do mistype. You want >to dial-up Community Coffee's subscription number every 5 minutes? really sounds like auto-dialers should be made illegal. what about the people (humans i think) that type in the phone numbers for the uucp database? (uucp retries doesn't it?) i really can't believe that people on this net can bend over backwards with rhetoric about the rights of a man to add to his millions by conning away the life savings of the hopeless. after the original posting, the discussion could have went one of two ways: 1) what we can do to stop these people from SELLING hope. or 2) the current 'different perspective' i think we have gone the way of (2). i think this says something about us netters. we don't have to argue about the legality of this man's actions. i think we can all agree that the action is illegal. however, i do not feel that this is a major crime and i applaud this person for coming up with a creative, NON-VIOLENT method of slowing down the money generating efforts of an organization that HE FELT was robbing the poor and hopeless (this IS civil disobedience...arguments about drawing the line are judgemental, subjective, and meaningless). we can all agree (maybe) that auto-dialing the MD telethon would be wrong. we can also all agree (probably) that auto-dialing a telethon that convinced people to pledge their first born child into slavery wouldn't be a bad idea. we are in a fuzzy area here. it seems that the supporters of falwell can justify the cases where the man takes the life savings of people because they feel that it is doing more good somewhere else. if they really believe this, its fine by me. i remember seeing an edition of "crossfire" where a "right to life"-er defended the actions of someone who bombed an abortion clinic because he felt that he was saving more lives than he was taking. danny chen innp4!hou2b!dwc now if we could only convince the ultra-conservatives to try auto-dialing abortion centers instead of bombing them...