Justify the Means

Does “the end justify the means”? Does “The end Justify the means”. In the movie, Mississippi Burning, the end justifies the means in a way because when you think about it most of the time there are certain limitations to getting what you want. In the movie the only way to get the Ku Klux Klan to confess and give each other to the police was to trick them and make them think that the Ku Klux Klan was after them. In other occasions around the world at the time it was not always necessary to hurt or kill people just to get what you want. Even though it was not necessary people still did it even though they did not have to (they wanted to). In the Mississippi burning the white people might have thought they had a right to hurt/kill Negro people just because they were scared of them and thought they were better then them. That is still no good reason. Proof of the white people hurt the Negroes and damaging their land, crops, and livestock is at the beginning of the movie as the credits where going across the screen there was a Negro church burning in the background. Throughout the movie we see that the “White Knights” are burning down Negro’s homes and barns along with the livestock inside them. All this evidence shows the brutality in Mississippi at that time. There was no reason to kill the three young activists. Especially not the reason that the Ku Klux Klan had (one man was a Negro). Even though the Ku Klux Klan did not have a good reason to do what they did the Federal Bureau of Investigation should still not have done what they did. The end was right but the means were wrong. The Federal Bureau of Investigation should have done what they had been doing but they should have tried a little harder to find someone that would speak to them so they could get the rest of the names. They could have also done what they did and get the weakest link to tell just by interrogation rather than what they had did and scared him and his family so bad the he would do anything to not get harmed. What they did was smart but not needed; they could have found a way to do it a different way like offer to reduce jail time and give him protection. They should have stayed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Ward, tactics and ask around until they found someone who will talk or someone from the Ku Klux Klan that is worried about being arrested. If they had done that instead of fighting back then they would have not made a bad choice. Even though the Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Anderson’s idea to get them to talk was a good one that worked out fine it was still wrong to do that no matter how bad it was that they did. All in all, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s entire entire end methods did work it was not done in a justice way.

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