{"id":29646,"date":"2021-03-05T14:07:36","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T14:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.yogaesoteric.net\/?p=29646"},"modified":"2021-03-26T20:35:37","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T20:35:37","slug":"10-of-the-most-memorable-acts-of-civil-disobedience-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/10-of-the-most-memorable-acts-of-civil-disobedience-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"10 of the most memorable acts of civil disobedience in history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Motto<\/strong>: \u201cResistance to tyrants is obedience to God<\/em>\u201d (Rev. Jonathan Mayhew)<\/p>\n

\u201cCivil disobedience<\/em>\u201d evokes a range of reactions when people hear the term. Some instinctively wince, regarding it as anti-social or subversive. Others want to know more before they judge. What is prompting someone to engage in it? Who will be affected and how? What does the \u201cdisobedient<\/em>\u201d person hope to accomplish? Are there alternative actions that might be more effective?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Lawrence W. Reed is president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), where he’s served as the Humphreys Family Senior Fellow since May 2019. Here is what he says regarding disobedience, from his own experience: \u201cOne of my earliest memories from childhood was an act of civil disobedience. My family resided near Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, about 11 miles from the Ohio border town of Negley. At the time, Pennsylvania prohibited the unauthorized introduction and sale of milk from Ohio.<\/em><\/p>\n

On many a Saturday in the late 1950s and early 1960s, my father and I would drive over to Negley and fill the back seat of our car with good, cheap milk. During the drive back home, he would caution me to \u2018keep it covered and don\u2019t say anything if the cops pull us over.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

For me, milk smuggling was a thrill ride. It was downright exciting to evade a stupid law while keeping an eye out for a cop who might have nothing better to do than bust a couple of notorious dairy dealers. I know my dad made a few bucks when he re-sold the milk to happy neighbors.<\/em><\/p>\n

We never had any regrets or pangs of conscience for committing this victimless crime. We were simply supporting a cause that even Abraham Lincoln may have endorsed when he said, \u2018The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.\u2019<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Government officials hate civil disobedience because it\u2019s a disgruntled citizen\u2019s way of thumbing his nose. If people are unhappy with laws or policies that are stupid, destructive, corrupt, counterproductive, unconstitutional, or in other ways indefensible, officials advise to show their disapproval in the \u201cdemocratic<\/em>\u201d way \u2013 which means hope for the best in a future election, stand in line to be condescended to at some boring public hearing, or just shut up.<\/p>\n

Lawrence Reed\u2019s go-to expert on the issue is not a politician or a preacher or an academic. It\u2019s Henry David Thoreau\u2019s way, who famously asked: \u201cMust the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the choice is obedience or conscience<\/strong>, every human being is necessary to try his\/her best to pick conscience, because human being means\u00a0conscious being<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Historically, civil disobedience \u2013 the refusal to comply with a law or command of a political authority \u2013 is exceedingly common. Sometimes it is quiet and largely unnoticeable. Other times it is boisterous and public.<\/p>\n

For an act to be one of civil disobedience, it is necessary to be accompanied by principled or philosophical objections to a law or command (to exclude such acts as simple theft, fraud, and the like).<\/p>\n

Some political theorists argue that to qualify as civil disobedience, an act is necessary to be peaceful; others allow for violence in their definition of the term. Revolutions are certainly acts of disobedience, though because they tend to be accompanied by violence they often aren\u2019t very \u201ccivil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a short list of what Lawrence Reed calls \u201cgreat moments in civil disobedience<\/em>.\u201d There\u2019s no particular order other than chronological, and these examples are not all amongst the \u201ctop\u201d examples in history. They are, at the least, interesting food for thought. See how many of them you could endorse.<\/p>\n

Defying a pharaoh in ancient Egypt<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapter One of the\u00a0Old Testament<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0Book of Exodus<\/em>\u00a0provides what is probably the oldest recorded instance of civil disobedience. It dates to about 3,500 years ago.<\/p>\n

Two midwives in Egypt, named Shiphrah and Puah, disobeyed an order from the Pharaoh to kill all male Hebrew babies at birth. When they were called to account, they lied to cover their tracks. The\u00a0Exodus<\/em>\u00a0account says their defiance pleased God, who rewarded them for it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So, anyone who says God is always on the side of the politicians must wrestle with that example, as well as the next one.<\/p>\n

Sophocles\u2019s portrayal of Antigone<\/strong><\/p>\n

The playwright Sophocles wrote numerous literary tragedies, one of which (though fictional) tells the tale of Antigone. Creon, the King of Thebes, attempts to prevent her from giving her brother Polynices a proper burial. Antigone declared her conscience to be more important than any royal decree. She was sentenced to death for her defiance but never recanted.<\/p>\n

Judea and the slaughter of innocents<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Book of Matthew<\/em>\u00a0in the\u00a0New Testament<\/em>\u00a0reveals that when told that a Jewish Messiah had been born in Bethlehem, King Herod felt personally threatened. He ordered the Magi (the three visiting wise men) to go to the city, find the baby, and then report back to him.<\/p>\n

As we all know, the Magi did indeed go to Bethlehem where they presented Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus with gifts, but then they disobeyed Herod and vanished. In a fit of anger, the King then ordered the execution of all male children under two years old in the vicinity of Bethlehem. If Joseph and Mary and others who assisted them had not refused to comply, the story of Christianity would be quite different.<\/p>\n

Robert the Bruce defies a Pope<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1317, the Pope demanded that King Robert I of Scotland (better known as Robert the Bruce) embrace a truce with the English in the First War of Scottish Independence. For his refusal to follow the Pope\u2019s orders, Robert was excommunicated.<\/p>\n

Scottish nobles took their King\u2019s defiance to the next level in 1320 in a letter known as the\u00a0Declaration of Arbroath<\/em>. It was the first time in history that an organized group of people asserted it was the duty of a King to rule by the consent of the governed and the duty of the governed to get rid of him if he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not for honors or glory or wealth that we fight<\/em>,\u201d they declared, \u201cbut for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life<\/em>.\u201d See\u00a0Seven Centuries Since William Wallace<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Flushing\u2019s stand for Quakers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Governor Peter Stuyvesant of the Dutch colonies in North America did not like Quakers. In 1656, he commenced persecution of them and demanded local authorities participate. The following year, the citizens of Flushing (present-day Queens, New York City) drafted and signed a document known as the\u00a0Flushing Remonstrance<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As Lawrence Reed wrote, those brave people essentially told Stuyvesant, \u201cYou are commanding us to persecute Quakers. We will not. So take your intolerance and stick it where the sun doesn\u2019t shine<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Governor shut down the town council of Flushing and arrested some of the document\u2019s signers but was eventually ordered by the Dutch West India Company to rescind his policy of persecution.<\/p>\n

Boston\u2019s smashing Tea Party<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nobody does tea parties like disgruntled colonists from Beantown. In 1773, the British parliament conferred upon the British East India Company a commercial monopoly on the tea trade. That and \u201ctaxation without representation<\/em>\u201d provoked the Sons of Liberty to stage the famous\u00a0Boston Tea Party<\/em>, an event organized by Samuel Adams and other American patriots.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Under the cover of night, colonials boarded a British ship and tossed its cargo of tea into Boston\u2019s harbor. Three years later, civil disobedience evolved into a\u00a0Declaration of Independence<\/em>\u00a0and open warfare between Britain and its American colonies.<\/p>\n

Robert Smalls\u2019s daring escape<\/strong><\/p>\n

Robert Smalls was born a slave in South Carolina in 1839. Twenty-three years later, in a daring escape, he and other slave friends commandeered a Confederate transport ship in Charleston harbor. They sailed it right past Confederate guns and into the embrace of the Union blockade.<\/p>\n

Lawrebce Reed shared this example as emblematic of the historic civil disobedience of all runaway slaves, as well as the courageous support they received from others who defied fugitive slave laws and provided them life-saving assistance.<\/p>\n

The fight for the freedom of black Americans did not end with the Civil War. Let\u2019s not forget those who resisted Jim Crow laws, such as Rosa Parks. She committed civil disobedience when she refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama.<\/p>\n

Gandhi\u2019s famous Salt March<\/strong><\/p>\n

In British-ruled India, British companies enjoyed monopoly privileges. In 1882, the Salt Act forbade Indians from collecting or selling salt, a dietary staple.<\/p>\n

Resentment against the law and British rule in general eventually prompted Mohandas Gandhi\u2019s famous Salt March in 1930. Huge numbers of Indians followed Gandhi in a peaceful protest for 240 miles to the Arabian Sea. More than 55,000 were arrested, but India eventually gained its independence in 1947.<\/p>\n

Sophie and Hans Scholl\u2019s heroic stand<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were students at the University of Munich when, at the height of Hitler\u2019s power in 1942, they formed the\u00a0White Rose Movement<\/em>. By the thousands, they printed and distributed leaflets denouncing Nazi rule and atrocities against Jews.<\/p>\n

They never engaged in violence as they worked to undermine support for the regime. They were eventually found out, arrested, put on show trial, and beheaded. Their story is sadly but beautifully recounted in the 2005 film,\u00a0Sophie Scholl: The Final Days<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Eastern Europe\u2019s \u2018Singing Revolution\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Soviet Union\u2019s \u201cEvil Empire<\/em>\u201d unraveled in the pivotal year of 1989 but leading up to it, citizens from the Baltic states to Romania made life miserable for communist overlords.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In Estonia, the \u201cSinging Revolution<\/em>\u201d put widespread civil disobedience to music.
\nIn Poland, a flourishing underground produced massive black markets until the communist regime declared the country \u201cungovernable<\/em>\u201d and scheduled free elections.<\/p>\n

When Romania\u2019s dictator Nicolae Ceausescu sent troops to arrest a pastor in Timisoara, unarmed congregants ringed the church to defend him. The soldiers refused to fire on them, and the Romanian Revolution was underway; the dictator was dead within a month.<\/p>\n

A final word<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lawrence W. Reed asks: \u201cwhere do you stand on each of these historic occasions of civil disobedience?
\nPersonally, I can say I applaud every one of them, wholeheartedly and without qualification. But then, as a former milk smuggler, maybe I\u2019m biased<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sermons of the American colonial preacher, Rev. Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766), are credited as the inspiration for the Revolutionary motto, \u201cResistance to tyrants is obedience to God<\/em>.\u201d Lawrence Reed said: \u201cI would vote for Mayhew in an instant \u2013 twice, if I could<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Motto: \u201cResistance to tyrants is obedience to God\u201d (Rev. Jonathan Mayhew) \u201cCivil disobedience\u201d evokes a range of reactions when people hear the term. Some instinctively wince, regarding it as anti-social or subversive. Others want to know more before they judge. What is prompting someone to engage in it? Who will be affected and how? What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1226],"tags":[1516],"class_list":["post-29646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-events-en","category-society-1602-en","tag-article_of_the_week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29646"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29835,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29646\/revisions\/29835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}