Law and Justice

In “Law and Justice”, I believe that Zinn is talking about how, even though we learn to obey the law, not all laws are made to be followed morally and there has to be a balance between the law and the justice. As Zinn said, “Obligation to government, however, it not natural. It must be taught to every generation”. By using the words “Motherland”, “Founding Fathers” and “Uncle Sam” America establishes itself as one of the family and, when asked for service, “how can you say no”.

It’s interesting that, from the foreign perspective of Gertrude Scholtz-Klink, America is just like Germany in the sense that, simply because someone personally disagrees with a law, they still obey it. As Zinn said, people sometimes get the domino affect in their minds; believing if one law goes it’s down with democracy and into anarchy. He used a good example of the “mass demonstrations of the black movement in the American South” to show how America didn’t descend into “general lawlessness”. When Martin Luther King Jr. said that by breaking a law that a person’s “conscience tells him is unjust” is showing “the very highest respect for law”. Zinn inferred that this meant that it was an act of “respect for the higher law, the law of morality, of justice”.

It was interesting to read how Zinn believed that, while the human race has steadily developed in arts, sciences and medicine, the government still benefits the rich. Only this time the government has legal and efficient means to do so. Emma Goldman had an interesting take on what patriotism really means (to her), “Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate”. With complete obedience of every law, a country could be isolating themselves from the global pictures and therefore denying human or civil rights.

The packet raised numerous moral questions that Zinn, while giving his opinion, left the reader to also form their own opinion; that’s the point, I think.