Many innocent people have died at the hands of terrorists who follow his orders to kill and destroy without giving it a second thought. A great number of people in the Middle East, although they may not be terrorists themselves, support Bin Laden and his cause and show no concern for the pain and grief he and his followers have caused. Obedience to these types of authority can be very dangerous. As Erich Fromm writes in his essay Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem, "If mankind commits suicide it will be because people will obey those who command them to push the deadly buttons; because they will obey the archaic passions of fear, hate, and greed; because they will obey obsolete clichés of state sovereignty and national honor- (361).
At some point, it becomes necessary to disobey. That point was reached in Germany in the 1930's and it has been reached several other times in history. In December of 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger and was arrested. Although what she did was against the law, Mrs. Parks wasn't afraid to stand up for what she believed in. Civil rights leaders rallied around Mrs. Parks and soon, one seemingly insignificant incident over a seat on a bus had sparked a citywide boycott of all busses by black citizens. The boycott helped give national recognition to one of the most famous civil rights leaders in history, Martin Luther King, Jr. The boycott and the support of Mrs. Parks' actions by civil rights groups also had an impact on the Supreme Court's decision to outlaw bus segregation.
The history of the United States of America as an independent country begins with disobedience. Some of the colonists didn't feel that they were being treated fairly by the British government. Despite the fact that many people in the colonies were still loyal to Britain, some people began to speak out against what they felt were unfair taxes and poor representation in the government.