Pacifism and the State

[MagusYanam]

I have been rather bothered by a question of late regarding pacifism. Strangely enough, this was after watching Paul Verhoeven's rendition of R. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. For those not familiar with the film, the premise is a society in which citizenship is based on military service. The rationale behind this is that voting is an exercise of political force, and it is only the veterans of military service who have proven that they are responsible enough to exercise such force and participate in society. Supposedly, Heinlein got this idea from the Swiss government's mandatory public service.

And that got me thinking about the inverse - the birth of Christian anarchism during the Swiss Reformation, specifically after the disagreement between Ulrich Zwingli and Konrad Grabel. Grabel's followers believed that the Christian ideal should be upheld without any compromise to worldly demands: and this included pacifism.

The followers of Grabel would go on to become a large faction of the Anabaptists, called the Swiss Brethren. They refused to serve in the militias or the government and were baptised at adulthood, following the example laid down in the Gospel. They also believed in the complete separation of the state (which they saw as dealing with control over the unholy elements of society) from the church (which they saw as the embodiment of the holy elements), and vice-versa. This led to their widespread persecution, not only in Switzerland and Europe, but also later in the United States. Nowadays, the greatest Anabaptist enclaves are in rural America and Canada.

I, like my mother, was born a Methodist, but my father and mother were attracted to Anabaptism very early on because of their focus on the value of community and their pacifism. My father had several issues with the practises and beliefs of the Anabaptists in Madison, WI, however.

His attitude was thus: if pacifists are going to be responsible in their belief that violence is never justified, and refuse to take part in that violence, they should logically then do all that is necessary to prevent that violence. He surmised (in my view, correctly) that all war is fomented by injustice of some form or another, and that people can only be driven to commit violence (in groups or individually) when they feel threatened or when they want to satiate a need previously unfulfilled, at the expense of someone else. He believed that war can only be stopped through the active exercise of justice such that all people have freedom from want and freedom from fear. Once a critical mass of people neither want nor fear, there will be no call for violence or war.

Thus, the duties of the responsible pacifist are twofold: firstly, to resist the urge to violence and as a CO to abstain from fighting during times of war; secondly and more importantly, aggressively but non-violently to further the cause of social, economic and political justice during times of peace. And in his mind, this means not withdrawal from the state and the society, but active participation in both.

So, my question was, in regards to Heinlein's idea of responsibility versus my father's, what constitutes social responsibility? Can pacifism be exercised responsibly, and if so, how?

[ST88]

Response Part II -- I've broken up these responses to deal with the two issues of theoretical pacifism and the practice of historical pacifism

The ultimate test for this question is: Can Hitler be appeased? What happens when Germany invades Poland? What happens when the U.S. is attacked? Am I to understand that the pacifist response is to negotiate with them?

Ah, but what was the cause of Hitler? Think carefully before you answer about how the German people could have been brainwashed or hoodwinked into electing a leader that propounded irrationality and easy and violent solutions to problems. Think about how the Germans had been suffering humiliation upon humiliation after the end of World War I, how they were dealt repeated blows by the Great Depression... blah blah blah... My answer would be: injustice. Political, economic and social injustice. If the Allies had dealt fairly with the Germans at the end of World War I instead of trying to drive the point home, Hitler would very likely have been dismissed an obscure, crackpot right-wing racialist.

So your pacifist response to the end of WWI was to not paint Germany into a National Socialist corner? That's all very well and good on hindsight, but don't forget that there actually was a WWI. Where was pacifism then? Pacifist responses to these situations can't be made in a vacuum at a convenient time. If you want to prevent WWII rather than deal with it, then you're going to have to go back much further than the Treaty of Versailles to deal with the Balkan situation before WWI. How about we go back and prevent the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which increased the tension between France and Germany and led to the Schlieffen plan? Or how about doing something about the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 which caused France to view the German states with even more distrust? The point here is not that you can't say you could have prevented WWII, the point is that you cannot prevent every single conflict that may arise with pacifist solutions because stuff is going to happen that will require you to make hard choices?

The case here is not that Germany could have been given a better deal at Versailles, sure it could. I think most historians will say that was a bad, punitive deal. The case here is that every angry general and statesman who signed that deal could have been out of power and now you're left with the pieces (as it usually happens), and now Germany has invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia. Sure, in a world where pacifism is an accepted mode of relations, all wars can be prevented. But this world ain't one of those; and now, Mr. Prime Minister, you're going to have to do something about those Nazis.

You think the British were shamed into India's independence?

I know it may be bad form to answer a question with another question, but just out of curiosity, why do you think the British didn't crush Gandhi's later movement out of existence with the same kind of brute force they used at Chauri Chaura? Violent uprisings the British were extremely capable of dealing with, and could simply defend themselves morally by saying that 'they started it'. But killing unarmed men, women and children got them very bad press back home. So yes, I think the British were shamed out of India.

You think I don't answer questions with questions all the time? Hmm? I don't think it's bad form? I appreciate the device? Hmm?

Moving right along...
The India question is, as I gather, hotly debated, but as I see it the British wangled their way out of Gandhian populism only to be confronted by the Bose-ite rebellion -- a violent one -- before independence was agreed to. The non-violence movement was a failure in terms of independence -- it was only through the violence, such as with the Bombay Mutiny, that the British acceeded. In my view, India had to show that it was capable of this kind of violence before the British would even come to the table.

[MagusYanam]

Part I:

The human species is caught -- in perpetuity -- between the intellectual need to rationalize events and the reptilian need to control the immediate environment (barring genetic alteration, of course). There are many more people who are suspicious of this type of "progress" because the right/wrong dichotomy isn't nearly as universal as you seem to imply.

If you take a course in ethical philosophy, you may come to feel otherwise. For people who struggle constantly with questions of right and wrong, we can say that we don't know what those universals are and it's uncertain we ever will, but we hope we're making some kind of progress. But this is a side point to a more specific issue.

I would argue that the vast majority of people on this planet have an internal sense of right/wrong, but what actions and effects are on which side is wildly different among individuals. Plus there is the further problem of the difference between knowing what is right and doing the wrong thing anyway for the sake of [insert mode of expediency here].

People are inherently confused creatures. But I think and pray that, left to their own devices, they can bring themselves at least partway out of the confusion, through education.

Piffle. I don't come back here year after year because I think I'm going to be converting people. This is a forum of ideas. Period. I do not expect any action to be taken by anyone, do not expect anyone's mind to change because they even grudgingly accept my remarkably well-reasoned arguments and spectacular turns of phrase.

Ideas are powerful things, ST88, as I'm sure you realise. Ideas have led people to war, built and destroyed entire civilisations. Why do you think authoritarian governments place the media under such close scrutiny? And forums such as these where ideas are propounded and spread can be extremely powerful tools. And you can throw up your hands and say, 'well, no one's going to listen to me about my brilliant plans for ending world hunger' - or somesuch - but damn it, don't you have to try anyway? Otherwise, what's the point of having ideas, or forums such as these?

I don't even think that the OP questions even apply here

And I couldn't disagree more. Power is an important factor, granted. And people in power can be blinded to justice and even blinded to reason, to some extent, in favour of their own best interest or their own expediencies. But the way you argue seems to make power the only factor, as though what we're doing right now is just some useless ivory-tower exercise, a distraction. And, according to my experience, reason can and does work (with varying levels of success), even on those who have been corrupted by the narcotic of power (or, as you argue later, those who tend to react first and think later).

The American media/commerce engine values emotional decisions over intellectual ones and pushes these ideas on the population. Reason is cold and ivory tower-ish. Emotions are warm and homey. Rason is hard. Emotion is easy. Just go with your instincts: how many times have you heard that one?

Gut reactions can be trained and developed, in human beings like in any other animal. This may sound corny, but in this case I think in these cases the gut reaction should be trained to 'what would Jesus do?'. Jesus didn't speak of reason - he spoke of overcoming one's enemies through love. Jesus spoke of an authority based not upon force, but upon love - a basic human instinct if ever there was one, and one that can visibly be trained.

And the authorities who relied upon force saw this message as dangerous. Why? If they didn't think an authority based upon love was anything but a pie-in-the-sky dream, why did the Romans crucify Jesus as a dangerous revolutionary? Why were the early Christians persecuted by Rome when they posed no military threat to any nation? Sheer ill-will on the Romans' part, or fear that they might pose a very different kind of threat?

It's the same question with Gandhi. If Britain was prepared to discount Gandhi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan as misguided idealists who posed no real threat to the existing order, then why did the British beat his followers and why did they throw him in prison for sedition?

Here's a fact: Gandhi was no idealist. He saw his principle of satyagraha as a practical political tool for effecting social change. King saw things the same way - he may have had a dream, but he was no idle dreamer. He believed in his cause and fought in his way to realise it... and he won. Against those who were not only prepared, but did use violence, time and again, to try and beat the nonviolent protesters into submission, King won major victories.

violence is the absolute last option -- but it is an option. And the threat of violence is often all that is needed in order to avoid it.

Supposing the processes of human intercourse always come down to a question of 'abort, retry, fail?', violence would be the 'fail' option. Violence happens only when people give up on diplomacy or when they are disinclined to diplomacy to begin with.

The problem with our current state of affairs is that people are too quick to violence, they don't use this tool correctly and everyone suffers because of it.

I agree with the first part of your statement, that it is a problem that people are too quick and too willing to resort to violence. But I think to see violence as a tool validates its use in such a way that makes it inevitable when someone doesn't get their way. Violence is failure, and should be considered as such. Bush should not have given pep talks once we went to war in Iraq, he should have apologised to the American people that he had failed them, and that he was going to ask their sons and daughters to sacrifice their lives accordingly.

I think that viewing violence as failure is an important conceptualisation to make, and I think those with a worldview that incorporates 'violence as failure' will be much more loath to choose that 'option'. Which leads me into part II...

[MagusYanam]

So your pacifist response to the end of WWI was to not paint Germany into a National Socialist corner? That's all very well and good on hindsight, but don't forget that there actually was a WWI. Where was pacifism then?

Well, you do have to start somewhere, and like you said, pacifism doesn't happen in a vacuum - obviously, Hitler can't be resurrected and that particular scenario replayed, so we have to rely on hindsight and analysis. And such hindsight can be very valuable in such cases.

There was a World War I - where did I dispute that? The war was a senseless one and it shouldn't have been fought, but that's another issue altogether. I think the aftermath of World War I had more to do with the rise of Hitler than World War I itself, though one could make the case that it was also a factor in shaping the political forces that arose afterward. But being the victors the Allies were in a powerful position, a position where we could have treated the enemy with generosity, dignity and - yes - justice. And it is very difficult to see Hitler gaining the traction he was able with the majority of German people without the humiliation of their postbellum.

My point was not that 'I could have stopped World War II if I was there' - that wasn't my point at all, if you had read closely. My reading of the post-WWI scenario was that when the Allies chose to leave the high road and instead exact penalties upon Germany for a war that had cost them as much as it had cost us, later violence became an inevitability.

You were the one who asked me if there was a peaceful way of stopping Hitler. My answer was that once Hitler came to power it was already too late. We did indeed 'have to do something about those Nazis', but that doesn't mean we scored a victory when we succeeded. Ask any Jew whose family perished in the Holocaust whether or not they felt victorious after World War II. The Allies had failed to show moral character and the German people had failed to show sense, and Europe once again reaped the consequences.

Again, I am looking at violence not as a 'last resort', but as failure. And given the consequences of any war, I feel this view is justified.

But the past, as you note so well, is past. What can we do now? How about this: instead of considering our mere self-interest as a nation and buying oil from Middle Eastern countries in a cycle that aggrandises the wealthy and exacerbates the situations of the poor, we take some of our vast military budget and funnel it into foreign aid and debt relief? How about giving aid to Sudanese and Chadian refugees and financially twisting Sudan's arm on the issue of the Janjawed militias? How about furthering services to African countries that are struggling with the AIDS epidemic? That's just a start, but I think the results would be quite drastic.

The India question is, as I gather, hotly debated, but as I see it the British wangled their way out of Gandhian populism only to be confronted by the Bose-ite rebellion -- a violent one -- before independence was agreed to. The non-violence movement was a failure in terms of independence -- it was only through the violence, such as with the Bombay Mutiny, that the British acceeded. In my view, India had to show that it was capable of this kind of violence before the British would even come to the table.

I assume you're referring to Subhas Candra Bose both in reference to the Royal Indian Navy mutiny at Bombay and the ties of the National Congress to the Nazis. First off, there is really only a very thin connection between Bose and the RIN mutiny, and secondly, the British were already at the table before the mutinies began. Thirdly, the effects of the mutiny are actually not so clear-cut as you made them seem here. The British responded to the RIN mutiny with the same kind of brutality as they did elsewhere, and it is far from clear that it was only the mutiny (and the strikes that followed) that convinced them to leave India.

The immediate effects of the mutiny were actually (ironically enough) detrimental to the independence movement. The mutiny split the Congress down both religious and ideological lines and essentially gave the British a political wedge which they used quite effectively against the independence movement before granting India and Pakistan status as (separate) Dominion nations. And... they immediately went to war afterwards. The mutiny was ultimately unsuccessful in creating an independent and unified India.

[ST88]

Piffle. I don't come back here year after year because I think I'm going to be converting people. This is a forum of ideas. Period. I do not expect any action to be taken by anyone, do not expect anyone's mind to change because they even grudgingly accept my remarkably well-reasoned arguments and spectacular turns of phrase.

Ideas are powerful things, ST88, as I'm sure you realise. Ideas have led people to war, built and destroyed entire civilisations. Why do you think authoritarian governments place the media under such close scrutiny? And forums such as these where ideas are propounded and spread can be extremely powerful tools. And you can throw up your hands and say, 'well, no one's going to listen to me about my brilliant plans for ending world hunger' - or somesuch - but damn it, don't you have to try anyway? Otherwise, what's the point of having ideas, or forums such as these?

Double piffle. Sure, ideas are powerful things, but, again, without actions ideas are merely academic exercises. (Authoritarian governments place the media under such scrutiny so that the media won't cover actions that make the government look bad.) And I'm not saying that no one should try to make these ideas come true, but there's the matter: the ideas have to be transferred into real-world situations instead of being just ideas. And where do you get the leverage to implement such solutions? Money? Sex? Power? You have to appeal to human motives that will get people going, not just say This is good for you and sit back and hope.

The American media/commerce engine values emotional decisions over intellectual ones and pushes these ideas on the population. Reason is cold and ivory tower-ish. Emotions are warm and homey. Rason is hard. Emotion is easy. Just go with your instincts: how many times have you heard that one?

Gut reactions can be trained and developed, in human beings like in any other animal. This may sound corny, but in this case I think in these cases the gut reaction should be trained to 'what would Jesus do?'. Jesus didn't speak of reason - he spoke of overcoming one's enemies through love. Jesus spoke of an authority based not upon force, but upon love - a basic human instinct if ever there was one, and one that can visibly be trained.

Love is an interesting motivator, and it was a ground-breaking message for such a time. So why didn't that catch on until almost 2000 years later? Why did Christianity spur so much hatred and violence at its beginning? There are many theories, I'm sure. There's the vengeful God who plays the abusive father. I love you, why are you making me do this? WHACK! Those who are abused as "children" are more likely to be abusers themselves. Even now, Christianity is not based on love, it's based on self-denial, which is a stand-in for love because love itself isn't enough.

And the authorities who relied upon force saw this message as dangerous. Why? If they didn't think an authority based upon love was anything but a pie-in-the-sky dream, why did the Romans crucify Jesus as a dangerous revolutionary? Why were the early Christians persecuted by Rome when they posed no military threat to any nation? Sheer ill-will on the Romans' part, or fear that they might pose a very different kind of threat?

Christians (Jews) didn't follow the state religion -- therefore they were Heathen. And they weren't pacifists. And according to the Gospels, wasn't Jesus crucified because the Pharisees were afraid he would form a competing power structure? The Romans were willing participants in their game of power, sure. But the Romans didn't want a Pharisee-induced angry mob on their hands. They wanted to avoid that violence.

Same thing with Gandhi. It's not Gandhi they were afraid of, it was the example that he set that showed other Indians that it was possible to stand up to the British. and the potential for the violence of the overwhelming numbers of Indians against the few British soldiers who were there.

King saw things the same way - he may have had a dream, but he was no idle dreamer. He believed in his cause and fought in his way to realise it... and he won.

For every King, there is a Malcolm X. Don't forget that the government thought MLK was a communist.

violence is the absolute last option -- but it is an option. And the threat of violence is often all that is needed in order to avoid it.

Supposing the processes of human intercourse always come down to a question of 'abort, retry, fail?', violence would be the 'fail' option. Violence happens only when people give up on diplomacy or when they are disinclined to diplomacy to begin with.

I find it interesting that the original choices were Abort, retry, fail, ignore. And yes, war is a failure of diplomacy. You are correct. But diplomacy doesn't mean that you negotiate in a violence-free environment. Part of diplomacy is knowing when to play the threat card. Violence is not inevitable, but it must always be a possible option.

[MagusYanam]

Double piffle. Sure, ideas are powerful things, but, again, without actions ideas are merely academic exercises. (Authoritarian governments place the media under such scrutiny so that the media won't cover actions that make the government look bad.) And I'm not saying that no one should try to make these ideas come true, but there's the matter: the ideas have to be transferred into real-world situations instead of being just ideas.

Okay, but then why does the Chinese government (for example) limit the use of the public printing of the Tibetan language or block all websites that have direct ties to the Fa Lun Gong? (They disconnected my web services for a few minutes the one time I tried to look them up on Answers.com - Wikipedia's also blocked.) Authoritarian governments don't simply limit reporting on their actions (though they do plenty of that, too), they try to downplay the importance of ideas. The current strategy of the CCP with regard to the media now is that they can report anything freely, including government corruption and environmental issues - but they are censored strictly on any discussions of political thought. As a result, you have a schizophrenic Chinese media with free, corporate and often mindless entertainment on the one hand, and a government-controlled discourse on news and politics on the other.

And where do you get the leverage to implement such solutions? Money? Sex? Power? You have to appeal to human motives that will get people going, not just say This is good for you and sit back and hope.

Might I note that you are making an implicit assumption here that makes you come off as painfully post-modernist. Everything boils down to the basic, self-interested instincts - rationality and altruism don't enter the equation at all. You need only look at American politics today to see how people are able to overlook their own best interests for what they see as higher goals - you have religious fundamentalists who will vote for a Republican any day of the week even though said Republican will do nothing for them to increase their money or power (and sex? Perish the thought!), and on the other hand you have wealthy New England liberals voting Democratic even though Republicans would do more to allow them to keep their money and power.

Why is this, I ask you? If it has nothing to do with money, power and sex, what is the motivation?

(I admit that the religious fundamentalists are likely motivated by fear to vote Republican, but let's assume that maybe forty percent are honestly voting on the pro-life stance for motives other than fear - it's still an issue that needs to be addressed.)

Why did Christianity spur so much hatred and violence at its beginning?

It didn't. You are starting from a premise based on a false factual assumption:

Christians (Jews) didn't follow the state religion -- therefore they were Heathen. And they weren't pacifists.

Allow me to direct you to Mark Kurlansky's book Nonviolence: Twenty-five Ideas from the History of a Dangerous Idea. He's a pop historian, but his bibliography is sound.

The early Christians persisted in an uncompromising and narrow interpretation of Jewish law. In the book of Matthew it is written, "You have heard it said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, resist not him that is evil." The rejected eye-for-an-eye formula is not a peripheral piece of Jewish commentary, it is from the book of Exodus. [...]

Under Paul's influence the Christians moved further away from the body of Judaism, further away from everyone. They became an odd and distinct cult on the outer margins of society, uncompromisingly dedicated to pacifism. Theirs was a unique antiwar posture. Even the pious and spartan [sic] Jewish sect known as the Essenes did not entirely denounce weapons.

The early Christians are the earliest known group that renounced warfare in all its forms and rejected all of its institutions. This small and original group was devoted to antimilitarism [...] This antimilitarism was never expressed by Jesus, who, in fact, did not much address the issue of warfar, though he did denounce the violent overthrow of the Romans. Warmongering Christian fundamentalists have always clung to the absence of a specific stand on warfare, ignoring the obvious, which is that the wholesale institutionalized slaughter of fellow human beings is clearly a violation of the precise and literal teachings of Jesus. [...]

For 284 years [...] Christians remained an antiwar cult. Christian writers emphasized the incompatibility of warfare with Christian teachings. Some characterized warfare as the work of evil spirits and weapons as cursed. They labeled the taking of human life in warfare murder. The Jewish War of A.D. 66-71 was viewed as God's punishment of the Jews for their sinful ways, and the pursuit of war, and by extension the pursuit of power politics, was said to be an activity for "the Gentiles," unworthy of a Christian. They attacked the pomp of Rome as a glorification of warfare.

The first-century Christian writer Ignatius called for an abolition of warfare. This would happen, according to him and other Christian writers, once the world embraced the teachings of Jesus Christ - to love one's enemies, to do good even to those who do evil, to respond to evil with goodness. Such determined love and goodness was not meant to be pacifistic but a program for actively fighting evil. [...]

Origenes Adamantius, popularly known as Origen [...] clearly stated, "We Christians do not become fellow soldiers with the Emperor, even if he presses for this." Christians would be loyal to the Emperor, but they would not fight his wars. [...] [Origen] did not condemn the military but only believed that it was forbidden for a Christian to participate. Christianity was about the promotion of love, and early Christians believed that love and killing were incompatible.

So why the change? Why is it that Augustine of Hippo would later devise a 'just war theory' and sanction Christian support of and participation in war?

Constantine I, son of Constantinus Chlorus [...] struggled to advance to emperor. In 312 Constantine's army was to fight a decisive battle against his principle [sic] competitor, Maxentius, at the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber. [...] Constantine had a dream in which Christ had appeared, commanding him to carry the sign of the cross into battle. [...] Just a generation earlier, to have placed a symbol of Christianity on a weapon would have been an outrage for Romans and an unthinkable blasphemy for Christians. Before the battle, Constantine was said to have seen a flaming cross in the sky, with the words "In this sign thou shalt conquer," words that were in complete contradiction to Christianity and would have been unutterable for Jesus.

Unfortunately for Christianity, Constantine and his Christian warriors won the battle, establishing him as ruler of the western half of the Roman Empire, but also establishing a new role for the Christian and for Christ, a God who now would not only sanction killing but would take sides to help one band of killers triumph over another.

And according to the Gospels, wasn't Jesus crucified because the Pharisees were afraid he would form a competing power structure?

No, the Pharisees were afraid (and rightly) that he posed a threat to the existing power structure. That he would form a new power structure is a matter of conjecture, but from the way he lived his life I would guess that worldly power was not a concern, though to be frank, he was tempted by it in the wilderness.

I find it interesting that the original choices were Abort, retry, fail, ignore.

Heh. Problem with the 'ignore' is that it always comes back to bite you in the ass later, right?

And yes, war is a failure of diplomacy. You are correct. But diplomacy doesn't mean that you negotiate in a violence-free environment. Part of diplomacy is knowing when to play the threat card. Violence is not inevitable, but it must always be a possible option.

Let me get this straight for a moment... you're saying that war is a failure of diplomacy, but violence should be considered a possible option. In other words, we should consider failure a viable solution to problems?

I'm saying people might go to war far less often if they stop thinking of a war as something they can 'win'. Not to mention the fact that even when a war is over and a treaty has been reached, the solution is usually only a quick-fix, since the underlying injustices are often not addressed. The Civil War and the Reconstruction ended the physical institution of slavery, but they failed to adequately address the systematic racism that lay beneath. The Civil Rights movement under its nonviolent leadership came the closest to eliminating racism in the United States.

For every King, there is a Malcolm X. Don't forget that the government thought MLK was a communist.

Your point? Are you saying the Johnsonian reforms just spontaneously happened, and that the nonviolent Civil Rights movement had no effect whatsoever?

And as I recall, the Nation of Islam and various other radical (violent) organisations did more to hurt the image of civil rights and progressive doctrine in the minds of the American people than they did to further them. Think about what Mark Rudd, one of the founders of the radical Students for a Democratic Society ('Weathermen'), had to say about it when it turned violent:

We played into the hands of the FBI by destroying the above-ground organisation we had come to control, SDS, and by isolating ourselves as 'terrorists'. We also helped create division in the anti-war movement. We might as well have been FBI agents, we did their work so well.

Violence used by people struggling to create social change tends to backfire and perpetuate itself. Look at the current situation between India and Pakistan. If the movement for Indian independence had not turned violent, yes, India might have had to wait a couple more years for total independence, but they would have gotten it - as a unified nation with Muslims and Hindus seeing eye-to-eye and participating equally despite religious differences.

[ST88]

So your pacifist response to the end of WWI was to not paint Germany into a National Socialist corner? That's all very well and good on hindsight, but don't forget that there actually was a WWI. Where was pacifism then?

Well, you do have to start somewhere, and like you said, pacifism doesn't happen in a vacuum - obviously, Hitler can't be resurrected and that particular scenario replayed, so we have to rely on hindsight and analysis. And such hindsight can be very valuable in such cases.

There was a World War I - where did I dispute that? The war was a senseless one and it shouldn't have been fought, but that's another issue altogether. I think the aftermath of World War I had more to do with the rise of Hitler than World War I itself, though one could make the case that it was also a factor in shaping the political forces that arose afterward. But being the victors the Allies were in a powerful position, a position where we could have treated the enemy with generosity, dignity and - yes - justice. And it is very difficult to see Hitler gaining the traction he was able with the majority of German people without the humiliation of their postbellum.

My point was not that 'I could have stopped World War II if I was there' - that wasn't my point at all, if you had read closely. My reading of the post-WWI scenario was that when the Allies chose to leave the high road and instead exact penalties upon Germany for a war that had cost them as much as it had cost us, later violence became an inevitability.

You were the one who asked me if there was a peaceful way of stopping Hitler. My answer was that once Hitler came to power it was already too late. We did indeed 'have to do something about those Nazis', but that doesn't mean we scored a victory when we succeeded. Ask any Jew whose family perished in the Holocaust whether or not they felt victorious after World War II. The Allies had failed to show moral character and the German people had failed to show sense, and Europe once again reaped the consequences.

I'd have to agree -- once Hitler came to power, there was no chance that pacifism -- appeasement, if you will -- was going to work. You can argue that the Treaty of Versailles was unfair, but in the end that is beside the point. And I would also have to agree that there was no "win" here, it was merely a successful defense from the Axis powers. I wonder, though, about your "taking the high road" on creating the post-WWI treaty. Is that a strictly pacifist response to not punish Germany so much that WWII was inevitable? Or is that the pragmatic approach that I envision? Both of us want to prevent war because it's such a waste of what might otherwise be productive, happy lives and resources. So what do you do to Germany to make sure it won't rise and try again?

Again, I am looking at violence not as a 'last resort', but as failure. And given the consequences of any war, I feel this view is justified.

No arguments here. War is failure. When used successfully, however, the threat of war prevents war. But when used as a ham-handed device of itchy-trigger-finger imperialists, it can't be successful.

But the past, as you note so well, is past. What can we do now? How about this: instead of considering our mere self-interest as a nation and buying oil from Middle Eastern countries in a cycle that aggrandises the wealthy and exacerbates the situations of the poor, we take some of our vast military budget and funnel it into foreign aid and debt relief? How about giving aid to Sudanese and Chadian refugees and financially twisting Sudan's arm on the issue of the Janjawed militias? How about furthering services to African countries that are struggling with the AIDS epidemic? That's just a start, but I think the results would be quite drastic.

Again, no arguments here about the U.S.'s catastrophic decision to go to war in Iraq. The threat was not used successfully by an administration who didn't have a clue about how to use diplomacy. But the problem with trying to use a strictly financial angle to wrestle such "rogue" nations to the ground is that the U.S. isn't exactly invested so heavily that a U.S. boycott of these nations would make much difference. Good luck getting China, Russia, and even France to divest themselves in a U.S.-led financial action. Currently, U.S. gets most of its imported oil from Canada and Mexico (about 20% and 15% respectively), the dreaded enemies to the north and south. Over half comes from the Western Hemisphere. Excluding Saudi Arabia (a separate problem), the U.S. gets less than 5% of its petroleum from the Middle East. You'd have to ask the EU where most of its oil comes from. There was a push here in California for many universities to divest themselves of Sudanese assets. The problem was that there wasn't much investment to begin with, so there was no leverage.

The India question is, as I gather, hotly debated, but as I see it the British wangled their way out of Gandhian populism only to be confronted by the Bose-ite rebellion -- a violent one -- before independence was agreed to....

I assume you're referring to Subhas Candra Bose both in reference to the Royal Indian Navy mutiny at Bombay and the ties of the National Congress to the Nazis. First off, there is really only a very thin connection between Bose and the RIN mutiny, and secondly, the British were already at the table before the mutinies began... The mutiny was ultimately unsuccessful in creating an independent and unified India.

It's true that a strict lineage from the Bose-ite rebellion to the British leaving is not present. I didn't mean to imply that this specific rebellion was the cause (though I can see now how it could be read as such). However, it typifies the type of violence that the British didn't want to deal with on a mass scale. Again, I don't believe that any one specific incident caused the British to "Quit India", it was rather the threat of sustained violent actions that caused the Quit. If I'm reading this stuff correctly, the non-violence movement got Britain to the table to talk about more home-rule colonial powers, but talks abruptly ended when independence was demanded. The fact that Britain was already at the table when the mutiny occured only lends credence to the idea that the violence helped things along considerably.

Either way, I don't buy the idea that the non-violence movement gained much as strictly a pacific non-resistance movement, rather the gain was in the heightened awareness that Indians could be united behind something. Hence the need to shove a wedge between Muslims and Hindus and deflect the violence away.

[ST88]

Double piffle. Sure, ideas are powerful things, but, again, without actions ideas are merely academic exercises. (Authoritarian governments place the media under such scrutiny so that the media won't cover actions that make the government look bad.) And I'm not saying that no one should try to make these ideas come true, but there's the matter: the ideas have to be transferred into real-world situations instead of being just ideas.

Okay, but then why does the Chinese government (for example) limit the use of the public printing of the Tibetan language or block all websites that have direct ties to the Fa Lun Gong? (They disconnected my web services for a few minutes the one time I tried to look them up on Answers.com - Wikipedia's also blocked.) Authoritarian governments don't simply limit reporting on their actions (though they do plenty of that, too), they try to downplay the importance of ideas. The current strategy of the CCP with regard to the media now is that they can report anything freely, including government corruption and environmental issues - but they are censored strictly on any discussions of political thought. As a result, you have a schizophrenic Chinese media with free, corporate and often mindless entertainment on the one hand, and a government-controlled discourse on news and politics on the other.

Far be it from me to accuse the Chinese government of rationality. As far as I can tell, idea-based websites are banned because the government does not wish to have to deal with the mass demonstrations of people who might organize because of these sites. The media coverage of corrupt officials you discuss has largely been regional -- something the central government has recently begun to allow because of... what?... mass demonstrations. The dissatisfaction with local and regional governments (due to outright, blatant corruption) could escalate in one region or another, so the Central CCP gets to look strong by shaking up these governments and quieting the population. The CCP has embraced these sorts of media stories, because they get to look like they are actually doing something.

And where do you get the leverage to implement such solutions? Money? Sex? Power? You have to appeal to human motives that will get people going, not just say This is good for you and sit back and hope.

Might I note that you are making an implicit assumption here that makes you come off as painfully post-modernist. Everything boils down to the basic, self-interested instincts - rationality and altruism don't enter the equation at all. You need only look at American politics today to see how people are able to overlook their own best interests for what they see as higher goals - you have religious fundamentalists who will vote for a Republican any day of the week even though said Republican will do nothing for them to increase their money or power (and sex? Perish the thought!), and on the other hand you have wealthy New England liberals voting Democratic even though Republicans would do more to allow them to keep their money and power.

I am post-modernist, yes. I don't believe for a second that Christian Fundamentalists don't vote for Republicans without thinking they will have more power. You've got to be kidding me. More power means more money, but even if money isn't your goal, it also means more ability to recruit followers -- which leads to more power. Hardly altruism. That's pragmatism. Further, the U.S. political system provides for just two viable parties, so it's a forced-choice or it's a no choice. The obvious altruistic thing for Fundamentalist Christians to do is not to vote at all.

Why did Christianity spur so much hatred and violence at its beginning?

It didn't. You are starting from a premise based on a false factual assumption:

The early Christians persisted in an uncompromising and narrow interpretation of Jewish law. In the book of Matthew it is written, "You have heard it said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, resist not him that is evil." The rejected eye-for-an-eye formula is not a peripheral piece of Jewish commentary, it is from the book of Exodus...

Unfortunately for Christianity, Constantine and his Christian warriors won the battle, establishing him as ruler of the western half of the Roman Empire, but also establishing a new role for the Christian and for Christ, a God who now would not only sanction killing but would take sides to help one band of killers triumph over another.

I defer to the historian in the room. I will point out, however, that Christianity didn't take hold in the world consciousness until it was used as an excuse for violence.

And according to the Gospels, wasn't Jesus crucified because the Pharisees were afraid he would form a competing power structure?

No, the Pharisees were afraid (and rightly) that he posed a threat to the existing power structure. That he would form a new power structure is a matter of conjecture, but from the way he lived his life I would guess that worldly power was not a concern, though to be frank, he was tempted by it in the wilderness.

Either way, he was a bigger threat to the Pharisees than he was to Rome, no?

I find it interesting that the original choices were Abort, retry, fail, ignore.

Heh. Problem with the 'ignore' is that it always comes back to bite you in the ass later, right?

And which one is the pacifist response?

And yes, war is a failure of diplomacy. You are correct. But diplomacy doesn't mean that you negotiate in a violence-free environment. Part of diplomacy is knowing when to play the threat card. Violence is not inevitable, but it must always be a possible option.

Let me get this straight for a moment... you're saying that war is a failure of diplomacy, but violence should be considered a possible option. In other words, we should consider failure a viable solution to problems?

I'm saying people might go to war far less often if they stop thinking of a war as something they can 'win'. Not to mention the fact that even when a war is over and a treaty has been reached, the solution is usually only a quick-fix, since the underlying injustices are often not addressed. The Civil War and the Reconstruction ended the physical institution of slavery, but they failed to adequately address the systematic racism that lay beneath. The Civil Rights movement under its nonviolent leadership came the closest to eliminating racism in the United States.

I wholeheartedly agree. War should not be something that is "won". Because I view violence as a tool, war itself does not have a cause in and of itself, rather it is subservient to the larger cause. I think the current U.S. administration completely lost sight of this fact.

And, yes, failure is an option. Ideally, as I think I've said before, violence should be avoided but can't always be. There will always be a case where diplomacy fails, where appeasement will not work. And here is where we should define the terms for diplomatic success. Is it to make sure that Belgium stays out of German hands? Is it to protect Norwegian petroleum deposits? Is it to save the lives of millions of European citizens? What is the goal? Some goals can't be attained without resorting to violence, depending on who/what the antagonists are.

For every King, there is a Malcolm X. Don't forget that the government thought MLK was a communist.

Your point? Are you saying the Johnsonian reforms just spontaneously happened, and that the nonviolent Civil Rights movement had no effect whatsoever?

Those Johnsonian/Robert Kennedyian reforms were, indeed, pie-in-the-sky. The non-violence movements of the 40s, 50s, and early 60s were effective in showing the nation that certain segments of White America were prepared to use violence against an unarmed Black America, and this undoubtedly helped pass the legislation. But enforcement didn't happen right away. It wasn't until the race riots of the late 1960s that Civil Rights legislation was taken seriously by regional governments. Not that the violence was or was not justified, but that it was a part of the equation.

And here's an interesting little tidbit:

Mary Dudziak interprets postwar civil rights as a Cold War feature. She argues that the Cold War helped facilitate key social reforms, including desegregation. Civil rights activists gained tremendous advantage as the government sought to polish its international image.
-- Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy

In other words, how could the U.S. tout its credentials as the savior of the Third-World if it was treating many of its citizens as third-class citizens. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Johnson effectively shut off that part of Communist propaganda that sought to sway and influence nations.

And as I recall, the Nation of Islam and various other radical (violent) organisations did more to hurt the image of civil rights and progressive doctrine in the minds of the American people than they did to further them. Think about what Mark Rudd, one of the founders of the radical Students for a Democratic Society ('Weathermen'), had to say about it when it turned violent:

We played into the hands of the FBI by destroying the above-ground organisation we had come to control, SDS, and by isolating ourselves as 'terrorists'. We also helped create division in the anti-war movement. We might as well have been FBI agents, we did their work so well.

No question that when violence is used incorrectly it can backfire.

[4gold]

Two great leaders of non-violent civil disobedience were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., both ardent pacifists.

I wish to take issue with this quote. I understand the confusion between pacificsm and peacemaker, but Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been opposed to the label of being a pacifist. A pacifist, he argued, is one who avoids violence. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi saw the violence and marched straight into it.

In fact, there is an awesome scene in the movie Gandhi, where Gandhi and a priest are walking down a road when they encounter some thugs. The priest wants to turn around, but Gandhi doesn't want the thugs to deter their path. Gandhi said, "Didn't Jesus say, 'Turn the other cheek'?" The priest mumbled something to the effect that Jesus was being metaphorical, but Gandhi retorted that he thought Jesus was being literal.

It might be a matter of semantics, here, but I am positive that MLK rejected the term of pacifist.

[ST88]

Two great leaders of non-violent civil disobedience were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., both ardent pacifists.

I wish to take issue with this quote. I understand the confusion between pacificsm and peacemaker, but Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been opposed to the label of being a pacifist. A pacifist, he argued, is one who avoids violence. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi saw the violence and marched straight into it.

I don't think the term "pacifist" exclusively means that you steer clear of potential violence. There are many uses of this term, one of which means refusing to fight in wars, which may be what you mean. But being a pacifist also means using the tactic of nonviolence in all cases, and especially when confronted with violence -- personally not resorting to violence. I have not seen the MLK pacifist argument you mention, can you cite this? If true, then I think this is just semantics. Because there were instances where MLK called off marches when it became clear that violence would erupt.

[MagusYanam]

Far be it from me to accuse the Chinese government of rationality. As far as I can tell, idea-based websites are banned because the government does not wish to have to deal with the mass demonstrations of people who might organize because of these sites. The media coverage of corrupt officials you discuss has largely been regional -- something the central government has recently begun to allow because of... what?... mass demonstrations. The dissatisfaction with local and regional governments (due to outright, blatant corruption) could escalate in one region or another, so the Central CCP gets to look strong by shaking up these governments and quieting the population. The CCP has embraced these sorts of media stories, because they get to look like they are actually doing something.

Quite an erudite analysis actually, but I think we're getting caught up in a 'chicken-or-the-egg' argument here. I'm a modernist of one sort in that I see history as being driven by ideas, where as you see (from another modernist standpoint, much as you may dislike the idea) history as being driven by power politics and economics. My point with the China example is that political power can be derived directly from the strength of an idea. In France (to use another example), liberals opposing an increasingly popular monarchy overthrew it not on the strength of their appeal to the ordinary Frenchman's pocketbooks, but to the ordinary Frenchman's idealism.

I don't believe for a second that Christian Fundamentalists don't vote for Republicans without thinking they will have more power. You've got to be kidding me. More power means more money, but even if money isn't your goal, it also means more ability to recruit followers -- which leads to more power. Hardly altruism. That's pragmatism. Further, the U.S. political system provides for just two viable parties, so it's a forced-choice or it's a no choice. The obvious altruistic thing for Fundamentalist Christians to do is not to vote at all.

Okay, very, very bad example on my part. Perchance I was giving fundamentalists more than their due. But you still have to answer my point about the rich Democrats.

I will point out, however, that Christianity didn't take hold in the world consciousness until it was used as an excuse for violence.

Interesting. The 'world consciousness' I assume you are referring to is the Roman Empire, Africa and perhaps Persia (which is about the extent of early Christianity's possible influence). But if Christianity wasn't 'on the radar', as I take it you mean, why was Christianity and Christian nonviolence an object of such concern for the Roman Emperors directly prior to Constantine? Why did they care if some far-left radical Jews didn't want to join the army?

People don't persecute other people just for the hell of it. I would argue that persecution only happens because one side fears the other - fundamentalists see modernism and post-modernism as a threat; Saddam Hussein saw Kurds and Shi'ites as threats to his rule; the CCP saw pro-democracy activists during the 1980's as a threat. In this case, what did the Romans have to fear from the Christians?

Either way, he was a bigger threat to the Pharisees than he was to Rome, no?

If they didn't fear him, then why did they bother executing him?

Because I view violence as a tool, war itself does not have a cause in and of itself, rather it is subservient to the larger cause.

And the way I see it, once you use violence as a tool in the propagation of a larger cause, you've already lost even the furtherance of that cause. Christianity lost its soul to power politics; the Cathars and later the Weathermen violenced themselves out of existence; the Indian independence movement destroyed a unified India when it turned away from nonviolence.

There will always be a case where diplomacy fails, where appeasement will not work.

Okay, firstly - nonviolence is not appeasement. Appeasement is where you just let the British take over India or New Zealand without any show of resistance. Nonviolence is where you make a stand, and you keep it - even if they mow you down, even if they try to humiliate you. The Maori of Parihaka won their rights in New Zealand this way, even though it took the better part of a hundred years and it cost Parihaka a lot of lives and a lot of people's freedoms.

Perhaps you should read about the rescue of the Danish Jews or the Weisse Rose movement. Better yet, Mark Kurlansky's book on Nonviolence is a quick read.

It wasn't until the race riots of the late 1960s that Civil Rights legislation was taken seriously by regional governments. Not that the violence was or was not justified, but that it was a part of the equation.

It took a number of things to enforce CR legislation, up to and including federal police action. But it seems from this perspective to be the case that the race riots did more to drive Middle America's sympathies in the opposite direction than they did getting the government to enforce legislation that was already on the books. I think that Nixon's election and the subsequent backslidings in treatment of blacks were the direct result of the Civil Rights movement alienating itself from the public through violence.