Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’
– George Orwell, writing about pacifists in Britain during 1942
If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.
– George Washington
I decided to revisit the philosophy of pacifism after reading a few comments on one of the blogs I write for, called Mr. Politics. Much of the time the comments on my various sites are quite negative: as with one who called himself “conservative” after he defended the horrendous foreign policy of jimmy carter (yes, I refuse to give carter the respect of capitalization, to hell with good grammar) and my critics comments consisted primarily of name calling. Another challenged my literacy as he defended a party led by a woman who actually thinks the terrorists will leave Iraq when we do. And people call Bush stupid. But that’s okay, as adversity builds character. Right?
Such comments do serve a purpose, as they remind me precisely of the type of philosophy I am fighting against. For I truly believe we are in the middle of the third struggle against Islam, and we will not win it without first defeating the philosophies of liberalism and pacifism. Lets start by remembering how the pacifists responded to the slaughter of thousands of innocents on 9-11.
War Is Not the Answer
by Matea GoldNEW YORK — The mementos of death are everywhere. Fliers showing the missing hang from the fences around Union Square Park; wax from hundreds of candles melts onto the stone plaza. Photos of the World Trade Center’s twin towers are pasted onto the lampposts, and piles of flowers wilt in the warm September sun.
But in this park–which once offered a clear view of the two skyscrapers reduced to rubble in Tuesday’s attacks–mourning for the dead and missing mingles with yet another, more unusual sentiment: a call for peace.
The base of the tall statue of George Washington is covered with such messages as "Pray for Peace." Across the grass, a long cloth banner is strung on a wire fence: "Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but of justice lived–Gandhi." In this park on the edge of Greenwich Village, one of the city’s most liberal neighborhoods, a loud chorus of dissent blends with the grief. Hundreds have flocked here to voice their pleas for restraint, fearful that the Bush administration’s vow to take action against both terrorists and the countries harboring them will lead to further violence.
Debora Goldstein knelt on the grass Saturday afternoon and carefully penned a message on the banner: "Will no one hear us who are crying for peace?"
"We cannot honor our dead by killing innocent people," said the 33-year-old administrative assistant. "That is not the way to find justice."
These pleas for peace fall within a tradition of New York dissent. Nearly every American military action abroad has met here with protests of one kind or another. But in a city reeling from the worst terrorist attack in history–widely believed to be at the hands of militants whose goal is to destroy everything Americans hold dear–most New Yorkers are loudly calling for a tough military response.
And so on Friday night, it was startling to see thousands of people pack Union Square Park for a candlelight peace vigil. To be sure, many came simply to mourn. But dozens wore fliers pinned to their backs that read: "Islam is not the enemy. War is not the answer."
Some say they are terrified that U.S. military action will only spark more violent attacks against Americans.
Others argue that the U.S. needs to reassess a foreign policy they believe has fed a hatred of America. Many admit to confusion about what the U.S. should do to respond to Tuesday’s attacks, suggesting an international tribunal. They are resolute that bombing is not the answer.
"There is a really forceful hand winding up to hit somebody, and I don’t know that it’s going to hit the right person," said Kimberly Peirce, a writer and director holding up a large banner that read, "NYC wants Justice, Not Revenge."
"If we obliterate Afghanistan, who’s to say that’s going to make a safer situation?" she added.
Published on Sunday, September 16, 2001 by the link is here.
In the health care field an inability to recognize and respond properly to danger is enough to legally declare someone incompetent. Apparently, the same cannot be said for the realm of politics. Despite the fact there has already been two invasions of Islam and over a thousand of years of conflict between Islam and Christianity, the conflict is somehow our fault. In fact, if it were not for the likes of men like Charles Martel, western civilization would have stopped existing some time ago. But such realities matters little to some, as the sickness of pacifism and liberalism continues to be a cancer of western civilization. For those who are curious, here is the original exchange from Mr. Politics that led to this article.
By the way, the original Christians faced some pretty serious terrorists themselves. Crucifixions, beheadings, killing people for sport, etc.
What did those original Christians choose to do in response to their terrorists and a threat to wipe out their civilization? (Hint: It didn’t involve voting, killing or nuking things, yet somehow they not only allowed survived the threat, they converted so many people by their response to the terrorists that they completely subverted and converted the terrorists’ base of supporters. Almost like that Jesus guy said it would. I know… go figure.)
Here was the reply of a more astute individual.
Thanks for the clarity. You are a classic pacifist and I have no misunderstanding on why you have that view. Please understand that I profoundly disagree with that position in the context of government. What you choose to do as an individual guided by your moral code and religious devotion is not an issue. Your extrapolating to governments that they should not be abundantly prepared to use violence to defend, protect and secure is patently foolish and extremely dangerous. To tolerate pacifism, as a nation is to relinquish sovereignty and influence, peace at all cost, costs everything.
“If not the greatest evil, yet war is a great evil. Therefore, we should all like to remove it if we can. But every war leads to another war. The removal of war must therefore be attempted. We must increase by propaganda the number of Pacifists in each nation until it becomes great enough to deter that nation from going to war. This seems to me wild work. Only liberal societies tolerate Pacifists. In the liberal society, the number of Pacifists will either be large enough to cripple the state as a belligerent, or not. If not, you have done nothing. If it is large enough, then you have handed over the state which does tolerate Pacifists to its totalitarian neighbor who does not. Pacifism of this kind is taking the straight road to a world in which there will be no Pacifists. ~C.S. Lewis, “Why I Am Not a Pacifist”, The Weight of Glory (1949)
So when logic fails….why not use scripture?
So is defending yourself immoral?
No. But doing so with violence has been forbidden of Christians by Jesus.
How else will you defend yourself from the Bin Laden’s of the world without violence? Christianity is not a suicide pact. Christ’s example of turning the other cheek only extrapolates into happily walking into the gas chambers in Auschwitz from a mind not in touch with the realities of the world. I get tired people with an agenda intentionally misinterprets scripture. Usually it is a liberal whose main purpose is to warp doctrine to where it is little better then a feel good club one attends every Sunday whose main function is a self-defense mechanism for his or her lifestyle. After Jesus told the crowd that the person without sin should cast the first stone at the adulterer, he did not tell the women to go and keep on sinning, he told her to go and sin no more. But the Libs leave that out and allow Jesus’s words to support every liberal or hedonistic cause they could think of. Jesus also never said, do not defend yourself and lay down as people try to kill you. When Jesus had a point to make, like with the moneychangers at the temple, he made it very clearly. And when Jesus asked Peter to put away his sword, is because Jesus had to die to fulfill the scripture.
The American Thinker weight in with a very insightful article titled: Pacifism and the Sword that delves deeper into this apparent conflict.
Q 3. Christians are commanded to love their enemies (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-36). So are Christian soldiers and police officers permitted to kill them?
That is a great question, for it summarizes the objection some pacifists may have concerning Christians who join the State that God ordains to wield the sword. What if the State requires its agents-including Christians-to kill in some circumstances? The reply is fivefold.
First, the easy answer-too easy in fact-is to teach that Christians should withdraw from any “messy” involvement in the State. However, I have always thought that it is the lowest form of ingratitude when the Church asks the State to do the “dirty work” of protecting Christians, but they do not pull their fair share.
If Christians have an extra-sensitive conscience about harming anyone in any circumstance, but they still want to serve in law enforcement and the military, then it is sound advice for them to work behind the scenes. However, when an enemy mortally threatens citizens, and the Christian police officers or soldiers have no other choice than to use lethal force, then they should not feel an ounce of guilt about it, provided they follow the law. There is nothing wrong if Bible-educated Christians-who therefore do not have to suffer from an extra-sensitive conscience-fight on the frontlines with all the risks that entails. No one has to be poisoned with hatred in his heart as he pulls the trigger.
Second, in Scriptural context, the command to love our enemies requires doing good to them (see Part 5 and Luke 6:27-31). It is not merely a gooey feeling. I have heard first-hand stories about soldiers who have done good to an enemy immediately after he threatened them with mortal danger. As soon as he dropped his weapon, the soldiers treated his wounds so he would not die. That is goodness in action; therefore, that is “love your enemy” in practice. True stories like that abound.
Third, as we saw in Part Three, Jesus and the Apostles Peter and Paul endorsed weapon-carrying soldiers and officers who did not have to leave their careers, after they encountered the kingdom of God, two of them converting. There is no Scriptural evidence that they stayed only and always behind the frontlines. This may be, strictly speaking, an argument from silence, but the logic of history requires us to assume that Roman soldiers may have to kill an enemy. It is completely certain that Jesus and the New Testament authors assumed this about the Roman military. They lived in the Empire. And God chose to help and call military men and a law enforcement officer, and as Christians they may have had to kill an enemy. So we must balance parts of Scripture with all of Scripture.
Fourth, other themes besides love are found in the Four Gospels, such as justice (Matthew 12:18, 20; 23:23; Luke 18:7-8). In fact, Jesus explicitly juxtaposes the justice and the love of God. Pronouncing woes on certain self-righteous Pharisees, he says: “But you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone” (Luke 12:42). He says love and justice complement, not oppose each other.
And sometimes justice is hard; in extreme circumstances it includes using physical force on lawbreakers and perpetrators of violence, domestic or foreign. Such protection expresses the justice of God and the love of God to peaceful citizens. Jesus helped a military officer. And the first gentile convert to Christianity was a military officer, not a civilian (see Part Three for details). Jesus assumed that the military was part of life in this world (Matt. 22:7; Luke 11:21-22, 14:31-32, 19:27). And Christians may join that part, if they feel so called.
Therefore, it is misguided to impose one verse or theme (”love your enemy”) on everyone who protects us, even by force, as if that one verse or theme represents the only one in the Bible. Unbalanced idealism obsessed over by utopians can lead to absurd conclusions, in at least a few difficult circumstances.. See these verses on the judgment of God on his enemies: Luke 11:50-51; 12:20, 51-53, 57-59; 13:1-9, 22-30; 16:19-31; 17:26-37.
He who lives by the sword may die by the sword, but he who does nothing to defend himself from the sword is surely dead. During Jesus’s time Israel was occupied by Rome, and what did the Romans do after his death? They destroyed the temple and scattered the people, and the country would not exist again for almost 2 thousand years. And the idea that Rome fell because of Christian pacifists is absurd, with no historical evidence to back it up. The reality is that:
Rome was conquered not by barbarian invasion from without, but by barbarian invasion from within…the rapidly breeding Germans could not understand classical culture, and did not transmit it, and they were of a mind to mostly destroy the culture: The Romans, who possessed it, sacrificed it to the comforts of sterility…The essential cause of Rome’s decline lay in her people and her morals.””
Will Durant
Great civilizations do not fall outward until they are conquered inward, in Rome’s case, by Gallic immigration. Pacifism is a suicide pact, and the reason why Christianity still exists is because it has defended itself from invading hostile religions hundreds of times in the past (Tours ring a bell, anyone) And it is precisely the fact that Christianity was so divided in the 600’s and 1500, as it is now, that Islam advanced as far as it did in it’s multiple invasion of the Christian nations. If everyone thought the way my critics did, we would be worshipping a very different god right now…..
My question to the pacifists is this: Why do you believe your viewpoint would not encourage aggression? Perhaps you would say it is okay for others to defend themselves, but you wish to abstain. Okay, so you are relying on others to defend yourself. Do you feel you have no obligation to your state? Pacifism is a luxury enjoyed only by those protected by a standing army, because if not, pacifists would have another name, namely the dead. Pacifism is practiced only in Democracies for a reason, because dictatorships will not allow it’s people to practice a belief openly that will weaken it’s ability to defend itself. Because humans are imperfect, and some desire power and wish to dominate others, there probably will never be peace. Anyone who has truly studied history, from the Hittites in 1200 BC to Hitler in 1939 to Hezbollah now, know the only constant of human history is war. And other belief is a failure to understand the realities, whether good or bad, of human nature. If all Christians were pacifists, Christianity would not exist. To continue on such a policy will only lead down a road to both the destruction of Christianity but also of Democracy. Sadly, the only thing I think that may wake us up from our coma is when the day comes when the terrorists finally nuke us. The country, the people, and the news pundits will be shocked and surprised when that day finally comes, but it will be our own behavior and inability to recognize our own enemies that in some part that leads to that day.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
– John Stuart Mill
The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live – this lost world – means that we desert the people who need our greatest help.
– Francis Schaeffer
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Perfectly stated. Peace fascists enable even more violence.