“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws... A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is…
“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws... A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”
-Marin Luther KING Jr, Letter From A Birmingham Jail.
“1. Some princes, so as to hold securely the state, have disarmed their subjects; others have kept their subject towns distracted by factions; others have fostered enmities against themselves; others have laid themselves out to gain over those whom they distrusted in the beginning of their governments; some have built fortresses; some have overthrown and destroyed them...
“2. There never was a new prince who has disarmed his subjects; rather when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them... those arms become yours, those men who were distrusted become faithful, and those who were faithful are kept so, and your subjects become your adherents. And whereas all subjects cannot be armed, yet when those whom you do arm are benefited, the others can be handled more freely, and this difference in their treatment, which they quite understand, makes the former your dependents... But when you disarm them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against you... Therefore, as I have said, a new prince in a new principality has always distributed arms. Histories are full of examples. But when a prince acquires a new state, which he adds as a province to his old one, then it is necessary to disarm the men of that state, except those who have been his adherents in acquiring it; and these again, with time and opportunity, should be rendered soft and effeminate; and matters should be managed in such a way that all the armed men in the state shall be your own soldiers who in your old state were living near you.”
Niccolò MACHIAVELLI, Il Principe, Chapter XX (“Are Fortresses, And Many Other Things To Which Princes Often Resort, Advantageous Or Hurtful?”).
I may go on to 3, the use of factions, but then be ready for a rant the like of which you've never seen... Pointed accusations inclusive.
