| | |
|
DecidingInThePresent 7 - 01 Mar 2012 - Main.AlexandraRex
|
| | It is very easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to admire a man like John Brown who was willing to put his life in real danger to free slaves, even when this involved killing slaveholders from time to time. However, I feel like John Brown presents a "simpler" example because as a society we all agree, especially now, that slavery is wrong. The reason I brought up Law and Order (episode name = "Dignity") is because I am unsure about how to apply John Brown's principles in the present - when a moral issue is not as settled as slavery is now. How should we act when we feel, as individuals, that a moral wrong is being perpetrated, but the government and perhaps even the majority of society do not agree with us? How far can, or should, we take our "civil disobedience"?
The internet quickly revealed that the Law and Order episode I mentioned is based on Scott Roeder's murder of Dr. Tiller. Roeder explained his actions at trial as an attempt to save unborn children (my source is Wikipedia, hope that's academic enough). John Brown was driven, at least in part, by his pity of the "poor in bondage that have none to help them" (p. 4 of the interview). Roeder was driven by his belief that unborn children deserved help as well. | | | At the close of class I couldn't help but think of the French singer Zazie's song J'étais là, in which she describes the world shaking from violence and turmoil. Returning from Somalia, Bangladesh and Rwanda, she remembers being in those countries and being able to count the dead, but when the time came for action she did nothing. She was there, and she did nothing.
We will all soon become attorneys, we will all soon be future surveyors of justice- and the most important question that we can asks ourselves is what we will do when the time comes for action. | |
>
> |
Abiola: First of all, my response was not intended to expand on the differences between Brown and Roeder in the light of greater social change. I made a similar point in class in regard to the distinction between “violence as a resolution” and “violence for resolution,” and agree with that distinction.
Secondly, the inability to “comment on abortion,” seems to me to be the main point of our discussion of Brown. Slavery was also an issue that “deeply divide[d] our nation” and there were undoubtedly just as many excuses for “abolitionists” to refrain from commenting on the similarly controversial topic of slavery in an effort to remain neutral. Your value of human life as an argument against slavery is obvious, but what about the life of a young woman forced into treating her body in whatever way the federal government (Supreme Court) decides is appropriate in contemporary society? What about the pain, physical and emotional, that she feels from continuing with an unwanted pregnancy? Or even electing to have an abortion and then being treated as a social outcast?
In Texas, teenage girls are required to obtain written permission from their parents before having an abortion. In the unfortunate situation where their home lives are contributing factors or their parents are unsupportive of their condition, underage girls are forced to go before a judge to petition for permission to choose their future course of life. Obviously the elected judges sitting in conservative districts cannot be associated with such immoral behavior and refer the girls to courts far away, often hundreds of miles away, to the nearest “liberal” court. I wonder how a 14-year-old girl, ostracized by her parents and unable to drive a car, finally receives the requisite permission to have a “legal” abortion? I for one would not want to argue with her that the pain she feels is not real enough to warrant consideration.
-- AlexandraRex - 1 Mar 2012 |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |