Originally Posted By TomSawyer I've said here before that I think every American should read Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" along with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The letter was written by Dr. King to other clergy who had criticized his non-violent protests in Birmingham. In the letter, he explains why he is protesting. This excerpt explains why King felt that some laws were unjust and how he could tell: Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful... Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal... <a href="http://www.nobelprizes.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html" target="_blank">http://www.nobelprizes.com/nob el/peace/MLK-jail.html</a>
Originally Posted By DVC_dad It is easy to confuse justice with fairness. Two very different things. One would hope that justice is based on fairness, but that's not always the case.
