Majority rule and power
When looking at the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. in, A Letter From a Birmingham Jail and Henry David Thoreau in Civil Disobedience, one finds that each man takes a somewhat different approach to delivering a message, but the messages are in fact similar, as both call for a drastic change to majority rule. Both men share the desire for universal justice and they feel majority rule prevents this, as too small of a number of individuals can make unjust laws that affect a large portion of the population. Majority and minority are two terms that King and Thoreau use in their writing's, but their definition of each differs slightly. King sees himself as a part of a minority in the fact that, him being black prevents him from having equal rights under the laws of the United States of America. Thoreau sees himself as a minority because he does not have a say as to the actions of the United States government that is suppose to represent him and he is supposed to support. Both men call for action and use themselves as a model for how to take action. The motive for both Thoreau's and King's writing is based on race and how the United States government does not represent all of its' citizens. The
This is what alarms King as he knows that any group that is given power will usually take the necessary steps to ensure that they keep power, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Thoreau does not believe that a government with these practices is capable of ruling him or his fellow citizens, "How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. Thoreau believes that a person should assume all consequences under the law if they are to revolt and that this will hopefully lead to change. " (King, page 4)King believes that opposition to the majority is the only way to obtain justice for all members of a society, and that this opposition, must come directly from the group being denied. This is an area where King and Thoreau differ somewhat, as both believe in opposition, but Thoreau does so by himself, while King organizes a march of thousands of people. His belief in non-violence is central to his method for opposing a majoritarian democracy. Although King and Thoreau agree on many aspects of democracy and minority power, their hope for the government of the United States is not the same. " (Thoreau, page 5)The belief that the government has wrong intentions, leads Thoreau to suspect that many of the laws in place are unjust laws and he should not have to follow them, "Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? (Thoreau, page 4) Like King, Thoreau proposes a revolt against the unjust laws of the United States. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. This is the reason why Thoreau wrote Civil Disobedience, as it is a protest to the slavery practices in the United States and a protest of the intentions of the Mexican-American war. Thoreau was a very passionate man and his ideas and observations were extremely intelligent and accurate. Their techniques may very somewhat, but their motives are the same as they both hope to dissolve majority power through minority action, "It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is rooted in eternal and natural law. " (King, page 3) King proposes that majoritarian democracy must be challenged through the actions of the minority.
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Acceptance Essays
