Approaching a traffic light that's just turned red? Hey, why not run it? It starts off with little things and then goes on to the big ones. That law saying that people can't enter the United States illegally or stay here once their visas have expired? If it doesn't work for you or your ethnic group, or is at odds with your politics, why not break it or encourage it to be broken?
There is a federal law in this country pressuring states to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages to anyone younger than age 21. I happen to interact and speak with teens and adults in the age range of 15 to 22 on a regular basis, and I think I'm on safe ground when I say the state laws that grow out of the federal government's pressure are frequently broken.
Now, you might feel that the government's intent is perfectly valid or it's downright silly. The point is that there are thousands, perhaps even millions, of American teens who have decided that they want to drink.
How did we get to this point, where picking and choosing which laws we'll obey and which ones we'll break has become the norm rather than the exception? Were conservatives of the 1960s right: Was America at the time becoming a society that was too permissive -- and dismissive -- of the law?
This was the era when civil rights activists used widespread civil disobedience to achieve their goals. When black Americans rioted in scores of American cities, some excused the arson and looting by calling the civil disturbances acts of rebellion, not criminality.
Conservatives of that time pointed out the pitfalls of civil disobedience: If we permit it for a good cause, what's to stop others from using it for a bad cause? When Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace blocked black students from entering the University of Alabama in clear defiance of federal law in 1962, wasn't that an act of civil disobedience?
Didn't rioting whites throughout American history -- who had no more need for the rule of law than rioting blacks of the 1960s did --help create the unjust conditions African-Americans found themselves in?
James Farmer, the late civil rights activist who was the head of the Congress of Racial Equality, said in his autobiography, Lay Bare The Heart, that NAACP head Roy Wilkins used to chide Martin Luther King Jr. about civil disobedience. It was the NAACP working through the courts, Wilkins told King, not civil rights demonstrations, that won most of the battles black Americans waged for equality.
In other words, it was that old reliable standby -- the rule of law -- that won the day.
gregory.kane@baltsun.com
