I think most do to a certain extent, if everyone who disagreed with a particular law rebelled there would be anarchy. A simple example is the recent smoking ban in UK public places, this law has on the whole been adhered to, however there are many people who disagree with it but they still comply with the law.
Most everyone disobeys one law or another. Look at the speed limits here (US). When I am out on the road I rarely see people who are actually driving the speed limit. They may consider themselves to be law abiding citizens but there they are going 5 or 10 miles over the limit (and very often more than that)
I can think of a couple of ways in which i disobeyed the law, but nothing 'criminal' or of that matter.
Depends on what kind of laws that your breaking. For example there is some traffic laws here in our country that are really stupid. Sometimes there is a traffic light for no reason... I don't even think about stopping the car.
Yes. It isn't for the people to decide which laws are right and which laws aren't - that's a task for our democratically elected representatives. If people could pick and choose which laws they obeyed we'd be close to anarchy.
If you study local laws, most people will infact break laws that they don't know exist. Where I live there is an old local law that states every man should do 1 hour archery practise on a Sunday morning, I somehow feel that there will be many who do not follow this law, myself included.
Regardless, people do pick and choose which laws they will obey (millions and millions of them) - we do not have anarchy. Now I would agree that if people chose to obey no laws and your statement were taken to the extreme we would have anarchy. It is also not possible for any of us to know all the laws. So, in agreement with Hopper, most of us break a law we are unaware of at least once but often more.
But that assumes they always make the correct decisions, if this were the case, there would never be any demonstrations or differences of opinions. Blind acceptance of our new rules and not being allowed to question them is not democracy. Democracy is having a say, being able to disgree with authority in the knowledge that you will not be victimised because of your views providing you do not 'overstep' the mark. In the UK there was pole tax demonstrations and mass non payment of the tax, this was in effect breaking the law but the demostrations and the depth of public feeling eventually led to the removal of this tax. This was the 'people' disagreeing with the elected people. Sometime the role of democracy is to demonstrate to the leaders that they have made a mistake.
So., if they passed a law saying that everyone had to kill their youngest child, or turn it over to the government or something like that it would be acceptable? This may be an exaggerated analogy but there are MANY unfair and repressive laws.
Yes of course,once the law is there,you have to follow.If not, there will be no law aiviable to mantain the world.
We are not talking about disagreeing here, of course you should disagree and demonstrate, thats very different to breaking the law. The elected government in a democracy is the voice of the people, you cannot argue that. How would you organize that ??? If the people elected a government that are stupid enough to pass such a law then they truly deserve it. But that WILL NOT happen, please be realistic. Some laws may seem unfair and repressive to you, but others will like that laws. Give me an example on a law that is unfair to everybody that is passed by a legally elected government.
I do obey the law even if I don't always agree with it; I think that is the only way it can work in a democracy. I think there are too many laws and it's about time that they introduced referendums on new laws that are going to have a major impact on our lives.