The oxymoron in the excerpt civil disobedience: Illustrates a theme: standing by one's conscience is more civilized than simply obeying the majority.
This is a figure of speech that is used to show a sentence of statements that are full of self contradictory statements.
The oxymoron here is based on the fact that it is necessary to obey the government. The contradiction comes from the failure to obey the statutes.
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