This snippet from my FW post was picked out by my 19 year old grandson. Jeremy.
Here is the resulting exchange. I do not want my words to detract from my image as a bloodthirsty hawk ready from my arm chair to fight to the last Iraqi.
Perhaps others can offer better arguments than I to Jeremy, but it's fun to look in the mind of a young man.
Harry ------------------------------------------------------------
I began it with this bit from an FW post.
The people protesting war can be understood... (Not to detract from the genuine pacifists - their philosophy is probably as sensible as you can get.)
JEREMY: I'm forced to disagree. Pacifism in it's purest form is a moral abdication. A pacifist refuses to confront evildoers because he is afraid to use their favorite tool; violence. He believes that somehow he might be infected by it, that the fingerprints left on the sword may be transferred to his hand.
Would a pacifist shoot a hostage terrorist who is about to execute a hapless prisoner?
Would they fight a school yard bully so that other children could eat their lunch in peace?
Would they, for any reason, no matter how just, take up the sword?
If not, who's to say that they didn't permit an injustice to take place, and use their ideology to cop-out of making things right?
"Violence solves nothing," and other bromides take the place of complex questions and appeals-to-pity in debate. Violence kills hundreds of children a year. You can't possibly support the killing of children, can you?
That pacifism tries to make a moral judgement on an amoral thing is stupid. That, consequently, evil actions persist, is immoral.
--------------------------------------------------------------- To: "J. D. Acord" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Bush and the war.
Jeremy,
The press is somewhat to the left, but radio talk shows are heavily to the right. I know of two conservative national networks apart from the individual broadcasters. The left complain about this, but it's a matter of ratings.
People prefer to listen to the conservative broadcasters (and a few of the crazies).
Genuine pacifists simply don't believe in violence - a perfectly reasonable proposition. They get themselves killed, but probably the violent are more likely to be killed than the person who suffers rather than be violent.
However, he isn't afraid of violence (any more than any of us). He just doesn't believe in it. He prefers peaceful means of settling disputes.
Your examples are all violent which perhaps makes the pacifist's case.
I can't really speak for them, but I suspect they would say that violence begats violence, that nothing is settled with a violent reaction. There are humongous historical instances where this is shown to be true.
Their morality is fine. I don't think that a good morality can properly be based on violence.
Reducing, or ending, violence seems a pretty good direction to me, no matter how difficult its realization may be.
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JEREMY: Pacifists can't claim the moral high-ground and allow other people to be hurt because they don't think it's right to stop them.
And violent cases are where pacifism fails. Nonviolent confrontations are, ironically, outside the scope of pacifism, because violence is not an issue there. It is when people interact violently that pacifism begins to crack.
They default to the greater of two evils; letting the aggressor continue to force himself upon others unchecked.
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****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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