Alla Vasilyeva
Professor Coy
English 201-40
9 February 2009
Critique of “Uncivil Disobedience: Violating the Rules for Breaking the Law” by James J. Lopach and Jean A. Luckowski
Some obedience to authority is required in society, as is oil to a finely tuned machine, and with a complete lack of either they may not be able to work to their full potential. On one hand we view obedience to be an essential part of a non-anarchist society; we can view simultaneously on the other the need for civil disobedience to be in accordance with our own personal moral laws. A proper and delicately balanced combination of the two enhances our society to function to its most full potential.
Lopach and Luckowski, the authors of the article ‘Uncivil Disobedience: Violating the Rules for Breaking the Law” focus primarily on the act of civil disobedience. The authors have explained the danger of unthinking obedience to other individual or group authority. They emphasize “Traditional civil disobedience has usually combined deep spiritual beliefs with intense political ones” (Lopach and Luckowski 408). The article focuses on what the idea of civil disobedience is today versus what the primary focus of it used to be in the past. The authors believe that civil disobedience follows a strict set of guidelines that follow Gandhi’s idealisms. “…identify an unjust law…, refuse to obey it, accept the consequences…and self-purification” (Lopach et al. 411). They believe that in today’s society the idealism of civil disobedience has come a serious distance from what it should be.
Through careful readings of the article one would agree with the authors on several points. Civil disobedience should be a non-violent act committed in protest to a law that one finds un-just to moral code. One would also agree that one should not protest in acts that may endanger peoples, or otherwise severely damage properties of private persons or companies. One may find strength in their...