I’ve been thinking about the assumption of many people that illegal immigrants and their supporters in the United States must be anarchists who have no respect for the law. While for some of them this might be true, it would be a very small portion of them. The problem I have with this generalization is that as a culture, our history does not recognize this view. Instead, we have normally recognized that a bad law has no moral authority, and people who have a love for the law might find reasons to rebel and commit acts of civil disobedience when the law is out of order.
Is this not the way the Boston Tear Party has been portrayed? Certainly the protesters broke the law. Would most Americans suggest that they had no respect for it?
While we have been led to believe that the Boston Tea Party was a good event, and so we do not question the people involved, looking back we have to admit the motives of many involved were questionable at best. Yet, we have a general good will to them and what the Boston Tea Party did that we are willing to overlook anything objectionable to the event. Why then do we find it difficult to accept the hardships of those who suffer from unjust immigration laws and give them the benefit of the doubt as to their normal stand on law on order?
The very revolutionary spirit in which the United States was founded provides the means by which civil disobedience can be understood. We know, from history, and from those involved in the Boston Tea Party, breaking the law does not always come from those who have no desire for law an order. Often, it is done by those who support a greater law than the positive law of the land, and the order of justice requires disobedience from bad laws.
Beyond the question of immigration, what laws, as they are found in the law books today, do you think need to be actively rejected by civil disobedience?
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