It's Not That Complicated
- Next, Dr. King deals with the question: How can activists intentionally break laws while calling for the enforcement of integration laws?
- At first, he gives the simplest answer possible: 'Cause some laws are right, and some laws are wrong.
- Then he gets into the differences between right and wrong laws. He says that any law that treats people like things or disregards their humanity is obviously wrong and shouldn't be obeyed.
- Likewise, a law created by the majority that makes a minority live in a different, less dignified, and less than fully human way is obviously wrong and shouldn't be obeyed.
- He caps off this argument with the outrageous fact that Black citizens weren't even allowed to vote in the South on laws that applied to them. He asks how anyone can pretend these segregation and anti-protest laws are democratic at all.
- Even if a law is good in general, it can be wrongly applied. Officially, Dr. King notes, he was put in jail for parading without a permit. Everyone knows that's not really why he was in there.
- Dr. King argues that he's not an anarchist. He breaks the law knowing what the penalty is. He and his people actually have the greatest respect for law out of anyone, because they're trying to make it better.
- In classic King fashion, he draws on Christianity, the Greek roots of Western Civilization, and American patriotism by pointing out that the demonstrators are merely doing what the early Christians, Socrates, and the Boston Tea Party did.
- He reminds us that Hitler did his evil in a technically legal way, and righteously claims he would have illegally helped Jewish people if he was living in Germany back then.