10 ms·

On Snowden and the Enduring Need for Civil Disobedience

103 points by bobwaycott 13y ago

jessriedel 13y ago
Waycott says > However, Slate fails to even take on the challenge of disabusing people of their expectations that one must submit to egregiously harsh punishment to be validly considered a civil disobedient. and spends much of the rest of the article arguing that Snowden's actions pass the other requirements that thinkers have claimed is necessary for justifying civil disobedience. So I'm pretty sure the Waycott is trying to claim Snowden's actions are justified even if he doesn't submit to punishment. But I can't find anywhere that the Waycott distinguishes between Snowden and the historical cases of civil disobedience where thinkers have agreed that submission to punishment was necessary for justification. Surely those past examples didn't submit to punishment for no reason. So what's different here? The Slate article, for what it's worth, makes a distinction: the magnitude of the punishment.
- d0mine 13y ago
  Technically you might be correct about the term i.e., until Snowden tortured and then executed the punishment might not be enough by historical standards.
  - jessriedel 13y ago
    No, I am not getting bogged down in semantics. I am talking about whether Snowden's actions are justified, not about the definition of civil disobedience.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  I found this from wikipedia about civil disobedience interesting: ACT-UP's Civil Disobedience Training handbook states that a civil disobedient who pleads guilty is essentially stating, "Yes, I committed the act of which you accuse me. I don't deny it; in fact, I am proud of it. I feel I did the right thing by violating this particular law; I am guilty as charged," but that pleading not guilty sends a message of, "Guilt implies wrong-doing. I feel I have done no wrong. I may have violated some specific laws, but I am guilty of doing no wrong. I therefore plead not guilty." A plea of no contest is sometimes regarded as a compromise between the two. And then there is always Sophie Scholl. But exactly because of that I think sometimes that can be a waste of perfectly good life... so in the end, I don't know what to think exactly.
  - jessriedel 13y ago
    Interesting. For what it's worth, Alford pleas exist in the US that explicitly accept punishment while still actively asserting innocence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea
- bobwaycott 13y ago
  Hey, thanks for pointing that out. I may not have been clear about the position I was taking--that is, that submitting to punishment is not a necessary requirement for justifying civil disobedience, but is instead a feature found common among some civil disobedients. The core problem with the Slate article, in my opinion, is that it flaunts punishment as a requirement, thereby playing into the oversimplification of the now current treatment of Snowden as not a civil disobedient because he hasn't submitted to punishment. Because my comments grew so long, I regrettably needed to sleep without digging into even further theories of and on punishment, which are central in treating not the justification of civil disobedience, but the just response to civil disobedience. Justification centers on the mode of action and motivations for action, not the results of action and punishment of action. Furthermore, Slate's article offers examples of civil disobedients who submit to punishment in such a way that leaves readers continuing to expect that civil disobedience == breaking law + submission to punishment. This problem has plenty of historical counterexamples to distinguish disobedients from one another, and confuses submission to punishment as a requirement, instead of a feature. This is why I wrote, because Slate "fails to take on the challenge of disabusing people of their expectations that one must submit to egregiously harsh punishment to be validly considered a civil disobedient." A primary example is that of revolutionaries, who often feature in discussion of civil disobedience. The American colonists who participated in the Boston Tea Party and other defiant actions were civil disobedients. Those who participated in the Arab Spring were, as well. Yet none of them submitted to punishment for their crimes, instead turning to work with other political participants to initiate a rebellion against what they perceived as a government that had departed from the principles of justice. As far as the theorists go, Rawls certainly was of the opinion that willingness to accept punishment is a sign of fidelity to the legal system in which civil disobedience is engaged. However, that is not the same as saying it is a requirement or a distinguishing factor that makes some civil disobedients better than others. Submitting to punishment can be injurious and undesirable when it weakens or derails further attempts to effect change. It may also be detrimental when a disobedient has yet to complete disobedient acts that will call full public attention to the cause.
  - jessriedel 13y ago
    Ok, but you still need to distinguish between Snowden and the historical cases of civil disobedience where thinkers have agreed that submission to punishment was necessary for justification. Simply pointing to some revolutionaries which are commonly accepted by the public as justified is not enough. You need to engage the argument of MLK, Rawls, Gandhi, or whoever. Would they have agreed that the revolutionaries were justified? Is Snowden closer to the revolutionaries, or to repressed blacks in 1963 Alambama?
oleganza 13y ago
99% of the time we all successfully exercise disobedience in our personal life. We meet with people we like and then do not meet when we don't like them. It includes relatives, friends, coworkers, small shops, big shops etc. 99% of the time you voluntarily decide when to devote your time, money and attention to someone and when to stop doing it. 99% of your life is a wonderful peaceful anarchy. Now there is state. You cannot decide not to provide funds to the state when it behaves the way you dislike. Even if you hide your taxes, the state controls all your currency and prints it for itself without asking you. You cannot simply choose another currency. You can move out — to another state just like yours or worse. You are only allowed to make a humble limited input every 4 years in a form of choosing who will tax you. There is nothing strange or bad in disobedience. You do it everyday in your life. It's only state propaganda which starts from the early age at school that keeps people terrified at the idea that they are simply bullied to give money for wars, police, spying and terrorising people around them. Under the premise of "social good", of course.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > 99% of your life is a wonderful peaceful anarchy. Even the time I spend in traffic has already exceeded your timeframe of "wonderful anarchy". Not to mention all the other personal matters that I could theoretically choose to do, if I were a douchebag. What if I choose not to spend time with my children? Or to say 'Hello' to my wife? Am I sticking it to The Man with my rugged individualism? > You cannot simply choose another currency Sure you can. Just make sure to convert enough of it to legal tender when it comes time to pay the taxes that paid for your schooling (and the schooling of those idiots you interact with everyday), the environmental inspectors and regulators, medical researchers, Peace Corps works, USAID, etc.
  - oleganza 13y ago
    Do you want to say that you say "hello" to your wife because of some law enforcement? I think, no amount of enforcement will make your children or wife happy if you decide to leave them. Voluntarism and peace does not mean everyone must be happy. It means everyone has ability to seek happiness without violent barricades. And there is a difference between "we take your money, then educate you" vs. "you pay voluntarily and then we educate you". If my parents were forced to pay for my school, I'm not obliged to be thankful for my education. Otherwise, how can I then be really thankful when I learned voluntarily with people I chose?
andrewla 13y ago
Why do we have to abuse terminology so much? Snowden's actions and sacrifices stand on their own without having to apply the label of "Civil Disobedience". It does not diminish or tarnish his actions to omit that label; but it does diminish them to apply it incorrectly. Fundamentally, he did not protest an unjust law by publicly and openly defying it, thus showing to the world the injustice of enforcing it. Rather, he brought unjust actions to light by violating a law, namely that of government secrecy, that is not really central to the issues raised. If he were protesting government secrecy in an of itself, then without standing up to face the punishment of the offence his protest would be ineffectual. But violating that secrecy is not what he is protesting, so staying to confront the legal consequences buys him nothing.
- jessriedel 13y ago
  You don't need to get bogged down in semantics if you just address the core issue: were Snowden's actions justified? Previous practitioners of civil disobedience clearly thought that submission to punishment was necessary for their actions to be justified. You seem to be arguing that submission to punishment is not necessary if the disobedience is indirect rather than direct (i.e. if the injustice which is to be exposed is not the actual law broken). But I don't see why that's important. If MLK decided to break a traffic law in order to speak out against segregation, he surely would accepted the punishment for this violation of the law. If anything, submition to the punishment is even more important for indirect civil disobedience, since the punishment itself is just.
  - calibraxis 13y ago
    The masochistic "disobedience = submission to punishment from those you're disobeying" idea is not only bizarre, it's a blatant distraction. The point of punishment is to scare people from further disobedience, and project an image of overwhelming dominance. It's an interesting case study on how terms like "civil disobedience" get coopted by those in power, to convince people that disobeying them should be hilariously self-defeating. (Imagine the US government submitting to punishment and reparations when it breaks international law.) As with all things, you choose actions based on their predictable consequences. ("Let myself get destroyed? Hmm, what could go wrong..?")

103 points by bobwaycott 13y ago

Waycott says > However, Slate fails to even take on the challenge of disabusing people of their expectations that one must submit to egregiously harsh punishment to be validly considered a civil disobedient. and spends much of the rest of the article arguing that Snowden's actions pass the other requirements that thinkers have claimed is necessary for justifying civil disobedience. So I'm pretty sure the Waycott is trying to claim Snowden's actions are justified even if he doesn't submit to punishment. But I can't find anywhere that the Waycott distinguishes between Snowden and the historical cases of civil disobedience where thinkers have agreed that submission to punishment was necessary for justification. Surely those past examples didn't submit to punishment for no reason. So what's different here? The Slate article, for what it's worth, makes a distinction: the magnitude of the punishment.

d0mine 13y ago
Technically you might be correct about the term i.e., until Snowden tortured and then executed the punishment might not be enough by historical standards.
- jessriedel 13y ago
  No, I am not getting bogged down in semantics. I am talking about whether Snowden's actions are justified, not about the definition of civil disobedience.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
I found this from wikipedia about civil disobedience interesting: ACT-UP's Civil Disobedience Training handbook states that a civil disobedient who pleads guilty is essentially stating, "Yes, I committed the act of which you accuse me. I don't deny it; in fact, I am proud of it. I feel I did the right thing by violating this particular law; I am guilty as charged," but that pleading not guilty sends a message of, "Guilt implies wrong-doing. I feel I have done no wrong. I may have violated some specific laws, but I am guilty of doing no wrong. I therefore plead not guilty." A plea of no contest is sometimes regarded as a compromise between the two. And then there is always Sophie Scholl. But exactly because of that I think sometimes that can be a waste of perfectly good life... so in the end, I don't know what to think exactly.
- jessriedel 13y ago
  Interesting. For what it's worth, Alford pleas exist in the US that explicitly accept punishment while still actively asserting innocence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_plea
bobwaycott 13y ago
Hey, thanks for pointing that out. I may not have been clear about the position I was taking--that is, that submitting to punishment is not a necessary requirement for justifying civil disobedience, but is instead a feature found common among some civil disobedients. The core problem with the Slate article, in my opinion, is that it flaunts punishment as a requirement, thereby playing into the oversimplification of the now current treatment of Snowden as not a civil disobedient because he hasn't submitted to punishment. Because my comments grew so long, I regrettably needed to sleep without digging into even further theories of and on punishment, which are central in treating not the justification of civil disobedience, but the just response to civil disobedience. Justification centers on the mode of action and motivations for action, not the results of action and punishment of action. Furthermore, Slate's article offers examples of civil disobedients who submit to punishment in such a way that leaves readers continuing to expect that civil disobedience == breaking law + submission to punishment. This problem has plenty of historical counterexamples to distinguish disobedients from one another, and confuses submission to punishment as a requirement, instead of a feature. This is why I wrote, because Slate "fails to take on the challenge of disabusing people of their expectations that one must submit to egregiously harsh punishment to be validly considered a civil disobedient." A primary example is that of revolutionaries, who often feature in discussion of civil disobedience. The American colonists who participated in the Boston Tea Party and other defiant actions were civil disobedients. Those who participated in the Arab Spring were, as well. Yet none of them submitted to punishment for their crimes, instead turning to work with other political participants to initiate a rebellion against what they perceived as a government that had departed from the principles of justice. As far as the theorists go, Rawls certainly was of the opinion that willingness to accept punishment is a sign of fidelity to the legal system in which civil disobedience is engaged. However, that is not the same as saying it is a requirement or a distinguishing factor that makes some civil disobedients better than others. Submitting to punishment can be injurious and undesirable when it weakens or derails further attempts to effect change. It may also be detrimental when a disobedient has yet to complete disobedient acts that will call full public attention to the cause.
- jessriedel 13y ago
  Ok, but you still need to distinguish between Snowden and the historical cases of civil disobedience where thinkers have agreed that submission to punishment was necessary for justification. Simply pointing to some revolutionaries which are commonly accepted by the public as justified is not enough. You need to engage the argument of MLK, Rawls, Gandhi, or whoever. Would they have agreed that the revolutionaries were justified? Is Snowden closer to the revolutionaries, or to repressed blacks in 1963 Alambama?

oleganza 13y ago

99% of the time we all successfully exercise disobedience in our personal life. We meet with people we like and then do not meet when we don't like them. It includes relatives, friends, coworkers, small shops, big shops etc. 99% of the time you voluntarily decide when to devote your time, money and attention to someone and when to stop doing it. 99% of your life is a wonderful peaceful anarchy. Now there is state. You cannot decide not to provide funds to the state when it behaves the way you dislike. Even if you hide your taxes, the state controls all your currency and prints it for itself without asking you. You cannot simply choose another currency. You can move out — to another state just like yours or worse. You are only allowed to make a humble limited input every 4 years in a form of choosing who will tax you. There is nothing strange or bad in disobedience. You do it everyday in your life. It's only state propaganda which starts from the early age at school that keeps people terrified at the idea that they are simply bullied to give money for wars, police, spying and terrorising people around them. Under the premise of "social good", of course.

mpyne 13y ago
> 99% of your life is a wonderful peaceful anarchy. Even the time I spend in traffic has already exceeded your timeframe of "wonderful anarchy". Not to mention all the other personal matters that I could theoretically choose to do, if I were a douchebag. What if I choose not to spend time with my children? Or to say 'Hello' to my wife? Am I sticking it to The Man with my rugged individualism? > You cannot simply choose another currency Sure you can. Just make sure to convert enough of it to legal tender when it comes time to pay the taxes that paid for your schooling (and the schooling of those idiots you interact with everyday), the environmental inspectors and regulators, medical researchers, Peace Corps works, USAID, etc.
- oleganza 13y ago
  Do you want to say that you say "hello" to your wife because of some law enforcement? I think, no amount of enforcement will make your children or wife happy if you decide to leave them. Voluntarism and peace does not mean everyone must be happy. It means everyone has ability to seek happiness without violent barricades. And there is a difference between "we take your money, then educate you" vs. "you pay voluntarily and then we educate you". If my parents were forced to pay for my school, I'm not obliged to be thankful for my education. Otherwise, how can I then be really thankful when I learned voluntarily with people I chose?

andrewla 13y ago

Why do we have to abuse terminology so much? Snowden's actions and sacrifices stand on their own without having to apply the label of "Civil Disobedience". It does not diminish or tarnish his actions to omit that label; but it does diminish them to apply it incorrectly. Fundamentally, he did not protest an unjust law by publicly and openly defying it, thus showing to the world the injustice of enforcing it. Rather, he brought unjust actions to light by violating a law, namely that of government secrecy, that is not really central to the issues raised. If he were protesting government secrecy in an of itself, then without standing up to face the punishment of the offence his protest would be ineffectual. But violating that secrecy is not what he is protesting, so staying to confront the legal consequences buys him nothing.

jessriedel 13y ago
You don't need to get bogged down in semantics if you just address the core issue: were Snowden's actions justified? Previous practitioners of civil disobedience clearly thought that submission to punishment was necessary for their actions to be justified. You seem to be arguing that submission to punishment is not necessary if the disobedience is indirect rather than direct (i.e. if the injustice which is to be exposed is not the actual law broken). But I don't see why that's important. If MLK decided to break a traffic law in order to speak out against segregation, he surely would accepted the punishment for this violation of the law. If anything, submition to the punishment is even more important for indirect civil disobedience, since the punishment itself is just.
- calibraxis 13y ago
  The masochistic "disobedience = submission to punishment from those you're disobeying" idea is not only bizarre, it's a blatant distraction. The point of punishment is to scare people from further disobedience, and project an image of overwhelming dominance. It's an interesting case study on how terms like "civil disobedience" get coopted by those in power, to convince people that disobeying them should be hilariously self-defeating. (Imagine the US government submitting to punishment and reparations when it breaks international law.) As with all things, you choose actions based on their predictable consequences. ("Let myself get destroyed? Hmm, what could go wrong..?")