1. Some people align their morality with the law, and consider breaking it to be immoral, even when the law is oppressive. I point them to my Dutch in-laws, who broke the law by sheltering a Jewish boy, and the Nazi soldiers and Dutch police, whose raids seeking criminals like them upheld the law.🧵 2. The greatest heroes of any age, the people who have secured all our fundamental freedoms, are those who have broken oppressive laws for moral reasons. When you malign altruistic protesters for breaking the law, you diss the legacy of those who broke it for your sake. 3. I'm constantly struck by the extent to which people take their freedoms for granted - the freedom of speech, the freedom to vote, workers' rights, weekends, holidays, pensions ... - as if they simply fell out of the sky. They were achieved at great cost by our political ancestors. 4. That cost included the consequences of breaking the law: being imprisoned, tortured, exiled or killed for it. Some laws are sensible and good, some exist to uphold a cruel and exclusive social order. If you align your morality with the law, you will often find yourself on the side of wrong. 5. Remember this, next time you are tempted to dismiss environmental protesters, or campaigners against the genocide in Gaza or anyone else risking their liberty for the sake of others. Breaking the law doesn't make them bad. In some cases it means they are the very best of people. The thread on one page: skywriter.blue
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