Pacifism

[Winchester]

Yeah, like their population numbers.

[Era Might]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' post='1856215' date='May 3 2009, 12:57 AM']Again the terms you are using do seem to say that war is not a moral power, and war is not standing up for what is right. This would seem to be your premise, which locks the debate. Of course if war is not a moral power, or standing up for what is right then pacifism is the way to go.[/quote]
When I refer to "war," I am referring to violent power in itself, apart from intention. When I refer to "moral power," I am referring to power that is rooted in living right.

In other words, by "moral power" I mean power from within, whereas by "war" or "violent power" I mean power from without.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1856252' date='May 3 2009, 12:20 AM']Yeah, like their population numbers.[/quote]




Also, Medvedev is running Russia

[Winchester]

[quote name='Era Might' post='1856254' date='May 3 2009, 01:20 AM'][s]When I refer to "war," I am referring to violent power in itself, apart from intention. When I refer to "moral power," I am referring to power that is rooted in living right.

In other words, by "moral power" I mean power from within, whereas by "war" or "violent power" I am referring to power from without.[/s][/quote]
You may not have noticed, but this thread's been hijacked. You're going to have to knock this stuff off and start complaining about getting back on track.

[Era Might]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1856240' date='May 3 2009, 01:10 AM']There were a lot of good people.[/quote]
Indeed there were. But you are getting at my point. There were movements, but there was not large-scale non-violent resistance. We need to develop a culture of peace.

[quote]That is what we are talking about. Start preaching the Gospel, it's a noble message, see how long it takes you, your family, and your friends to be taken away and shot or worked to death.[/quote]
If someone dies having lived right, and having stood up for what is right, then I believe their death will yield much fruit.

[quote]The "They can't kill us all" mentality doesn't work when they actually are trying to kill all of you.[/quote]
They can kill all of us, but that will only ensure their own destruction.

[quote]They didn't want to. Much of the German populace supported exterminating the Jews and such. Are you asking what would have happened if they killed every non Aryan and all traitors to the Reich? I guess they would have said well done to us and declaired victory.[/quote]
Part of the problem was precisely that much of German society did not resist. And part of the power of non-violent resistance is that it converts hearts. Germans who accepted the Nazis needed conversion of heart.

I believe that the Gospel and the Sacraments are more powerful than any military.

[Winchester]

[quote name='Era Might' post='1856264' date='May 3 2009, 01:28 AM']There has to be a culture of peace.[/quote]
You mean non-violence. Peace and absence of war aren't synonymous.

[sweens8403]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1856175' date='May 3 2009, 01:27 AM']I get the idea behind citizens not cooperating. The bad guys will intentionally kill innocents. They will use many means to ensure citizens cooperate. They will do this until citizens cooperate and the ordinary will eventually do as the government says. Nazis would simply have killed people until the people capitulated. And they would have because the kind of backbone it takes to let your children or spouses be executed or tortured to death to pay for your noncooperation isn't in everyone. It ain't in me. Killing's easier, I reckon.

Would you refuse to cooperate to the point of watching your own children executed? This is one of the tactics used by tyrants. Would you be willing to watch that? After you're gone, would your neighbor? And so on.[/quote]

This is precisely why ze germans disarmed the jewish populace before rounding them up to go to the ghetto's. How far do you think the nazi's would have gotten if they knew each family rounded up would cost at least one soldier?

That, more than passive non-compliance, is what tyrants understand.

How do you get the bully at school to leave you alone once and for all? You break his nose, he'll get the message. Just ignoring him so I "wasn't fun anymore" never did.

[Era Might]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1856268' date='May 3 2009, 01:29 AM']You mean non-violence. Peace and absence of war aren't synonymous.[/quote]
I say "culture of peace" because I believe a culture of non-violent resistance can lead to true peace (which, as you said, is more than just an absence of war). I'm not sure that war can lead to true peace. I understand that's an arguable statement, and I don't have all these matters settled in my mind (hence this thread). But the more I read, the more I tend to believe that war is a sort of broken and self-destructive system that the world clings to.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Era Might' post='1856264' date='May 3 2009, 01:28 AM']Indeed there were. But you are getting at my point. There were movements, but there was not large-scale non-violent resistance. We need to develop a culture of peace.[/quote]

And why couldn't they become large-scale?


[quote]If someone dies having lived right, and having stood up for what is right, then I believe their death will yield much fruit.[/quote]

That woman I mentioned earlier told me a story. On her first day at the camp the commidant came in and pointed his sidearm at one of the girls and demanded to know her name. She gave her birth name and he shot her dead. He did this once more. He pointed his sidearm at a third girl and demanded to know her name. She finially got the idea and rather that shout out her name shouted out the number they had tattooed on her arm.

What were the names of the first two girls who were whot? No idea. No one remembers. They were good girls, good people. They had their brains blown out, no one remembers who they are, that was the end of it.

Now perhapse you can speculate about some "fruit" that came out of that. I don't think anyone there could see any fruit out of it.


[quote]They can kill all of us, but that will only ensure their own destruction.[/quote]

What does that mean? How?

As far as I can see the Nazis just had a good old time slaughtering Jews, Slavs, dissidents, homosexuals, the physically and mentally retarted etc. The destruction of the Nazi government came about when Hitler blew out his brains as the Societ troops approached his bunker.


[quote]Part of the problem was precisely that much of German society did not resist. And part of the power of non-violent resistance is that it converts hearts. Germans who accepted the Nazis needed conversion of heart.[/quote]

Sure, nd perhapse after they had slaughtered every last Jew in Europe the Germans would feel really, really bad about what they did.

Kind of like us and the Native Americans. We and the Europeans slaughtered them and took their land and stuck their ancestors on reservations that still are amongst the poorest populations in the country, but we feel like real jerks now.

[quote]I believe that the Gospel and the Sacraments are more powerful than any military.[/quote]


alright

[Norseman82]

I don't think that the case of early Christians willing to let their family be killed is a good analogy here because it was a requirement of faith, i.e., that they would be guilty of apostasy and would spend eternity in hell if they renounced the faith, until and unless pacifism becomes an issue that will determine whether a person goes to hell or not.

Humanity has a natural survival instinct that will either drive them to preserve their own lives and those in their family/community. And if a person is willing to die, they have a tendency to try to make sure that there is someone behind to take care of their responsibilities in the family/community so that others can "continue the fight", so to speak, or calculate a way that their death will have a positive effect, whether it be in negative publicity for those who kill them, or they will adopt a strategy of "If they're going to take me down, I'm going to bring down as many of them with me as I can".

This is the human nature we are dealing with.

[Era Might]

[quote name='Norseman82' post='1856524' date='May 3 2009, 02:28 PM']I don't think that the case of early Christians willing to let their family be killed is a good analogy here because it was a requirement of faith, i.e., that they would be guilty of apostasy and would spend eternity in hell if they renounced the faith, until and unless pacifism becomes an issue that will determine whether a person goes to hell or not.[/quote]
I used them as an analogy because they did not respond with violence. They could have professed their faith and still have used violence against their persecutors. But they didn't.

Also, I am using the early Christians collectively as an analogy, rather than each one individually. That is, I am trying to address pacifism on a social scale, rather than an individual scale. In exploring these issues, I think pacifism on an individual scale would probably have to be treated separately from pacifism on a social scale, because each has its own considerations.

[Norseman82]

[quote name='Era Might' post='1856536' date='May 3 2009, 02:37 PM']Also, I am using the early Christians collectively as an analogy, rather than each one individually. That is, I am trying to address pacifism on a social scale, rather than an individual scale. In exploring these issues, I think pacifism on an individual scale would probably have to be treated separately from pacifism on a social scale, because each has its own considerations.[/quote]

The problem is, though, that in order to acheive this on a social scale, everyone needs to be willing to do this on an individual scale. As I pointed out, humanity has a survival instinct. The early Christians, with the threat of heaven/hell over the issue of apostasy, responded the way they did as a form of survival - they wanted to preserve their eternal life. So until the Church declares that we are all going to hell if we do anything to defend ourselves, there will not be a survival impetus to embrace pacifism.

Once Christianity was legalized and became the state religon, though, how long did pacifism last?

[Aloysius]

Soviet Communism would not have collapsed when it did without military power. It would've exhausted the whole world's resources expanding itself first... because every economic problem would've been solved by the addition of a new member state. Once the whole world was Soviet (because they'd all non-violently resisted) then eventually it would've collapsed worldwide... the way neo-Capitalism is beginning to collapse, actually.

Christianity would not have spread around the world without some aid from defensive swords, speaking in purely natural terms. And it was God's will that Christianity should ride some of those waves for the higher good.

This pacifism is pure naivety, this is refusing to deal with human nature. It is a morally evil position, because non-violent resistance sometimes IS the "doing nothing" qualified perfectly for the statement "Evil only triumphs when good men do nothing".

I stand by my position that all non-violent resistance has only ever worked in all of human history when a bigger larger threat of violence loomed.

[Era Might]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1856579' date='May 3 2009, 02:43 PM']This pacifism is pure naivety, this is refusing to deal with human nature. It is a morally evil position, because non-violent resistance sometimes IS the "doing nothing" qualified perfectly for the statement "Evil only triumphs when good men do nothing".[/quote]
Non-violent resistance is by definition not "doing nothing." It is doing something that is non-violent.

[Aloysius]

yes, but when that something is something completely ineffectual, it amounts to the "doing nothing" spoken about in that quote. And that something will, in many scenarios, be an ineffectual something.