" A healthy disregard for authority in all its forms" is something the late Ethel Kennedy had, according to the documentary about her life.
Some people might think that sounds bad - like, what did she do, go around disobeying the law? Did she "flout" authority? That doesn't seem like the way to go...?
But what the statement refers to is critical thinking. As in: a person may, of course, obey the law and not go around doing bad things, but on the other hand, you also think for yourself, and if someone in authority tells you to do something and you think it's wrong, then you make up your own mind and don't do it.
In Hitler's Nazi Germany if more people had employed critical thinking and refused to do stuff he was telling them to do, then six million people would not have been harmed and killed in the Holocaust.
Sometimes a person who has "authority" is a very very bad person, and we should not follow their orders.
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