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Comment by ubernostrum | Hacker News Reader

This right here is the thing that kind of bugs me.

Once upon a time, the notion of civil disobedience was intimately connected to accepting and even welcoming the punishment that came with breaking the unjust law -- after all, if people just walked away untouched from it, how unjust could it be? Only by suffering actual grievous harm at the hands of the law could someone demonstrate that the law was unjust.

Now, though, the attitude seems to be "Nope, was just protesting this law I don't like, that means you shouldn't do anything to me".

As the saying goes: that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

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In Plato's writings Apology and Crito he documents Socrates views on this. Ultimately Socrates agrees it is only just to accept his sentence as undermining one law is as bad as undermining all laws. Really great readings on the relationship between individual and society.

I think you're both right. A person should be aware of the potential consequences for breaking what they perceive to be an unjust law, but if others also believe the law to be unjust they should have the right to be outraged regardless.

I guess I don't understand what people who object to this outcome are supposed to do then. It's inappropriate to object to someone facing decades in prison for facilitating consensual transactions between adults?

That's all I'm doing.

People who object to a law should use a martyr as a rallying cry to show people the extent which laws are unjust and convince other people and politicians that the laws should be changed.

By making your demand the freeing of someone who may be a martyr but did little to effect actual change in the laws(is not a pivotal leader in the political portion of the movement) you consider unjust, you are not progressing the ideas you believe in. Only trying to undo a single action.

If and when the laws are changed to make the bulk of their actions legal, they will likely be freed then either for legal or political reasons.

> is not a pivotal leader in the political portion of the movement

I don't agree that this matters, but if it did, then certainly DPR is a pivotal leader in the "political portion" of the movement. I'm not sure how you can say he's not?

Because he does not seem to lead any people, or actively promote changes in laws (as evidenced by his choice of defense if nothing else). Instead he seems to be a regular business man, trying to make money. For pivotal leader I am talking a Martin Luther King, not a Reverend Jesse Jackson.

There's a fine line between acknowledging that persecution is sometimes a requirement of successful disobedience, but you should not expect it as a requirement. That'd be like saying being surprised that people are mad when protesters get beaten, saying "that's the price for civil disobedience".

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