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<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1><b>quote:</b></font><p>Pacifism covers a broad range of ideas and practices, but the common denominator is opposition to force and militarism at the individual, societal, and international levels. In its purest form this opposition is absolute, unequivocal, and unconditional, and no resort to any violence whatsoever is condoned, for any reason. Absolute pacifists would reject just-war theology, arguing that there are no circumstances in which war can be morally acceptable. The Lord Buddha so argued, and his followers have proved remarkably resilient in the face of invasion and oppression. The satyagraha protests organized by Gandhi against British rule in India, and King's civil rights protests in the USA in the 1960s, illustrate the use and efficacy of non-violent protest. <BR> <BR>Approaching this but not rejecting violence in self-defence is the anarchist tradition that rejects the initiation of violence and thus most forms of government, based as they are on force or the threat of same. Because anarchism became associated with bomb-throwers in the late 19th century, and with some of the wilder elements on the Republican side during the Spanish civil war, this tradition continues under the name of libertarianism and has developed a corpus of political economy theory which states that the ultimate reason governments engage in war is to extend their ability to coerce their own peoples. <BR> <BR>When pacifist movements are more conditional than that, it is difficult to see how they can still claim the title, but they do. The slogan ‘the war to end all wars’, belatedly thought up to justify the carnage of WW I, springs to mind; also the use of the euphemism ‘pacification’ to describe laying waste a territory in order to force the inhabitants to give up whatever struggle they are engaged in. In principle, means and not ends define pacifism, and this precludes the use of violence or coercion even in the enforcement of domestic law. Thus properly pacifist convictions are a matter of strictly private moral preference rather than a question of public policy, since the latter ultimately depends on coercion. <BR> <BR>Conscientious objection based on unconditional pacifist convictions has tended to be respected even during the total wars of the 20th century, but not when it is more selective. The peace and anti-war movements that objectively served the cause of the USSR during the Cold War and earlier are a case in point. While attracting many genuine pacifists, their purpose (often invisible to the rank and file) was to increase the relative international power of one of the most coercive regimes the world has ever seen, thus they were at the core intellectually negligible and morally bankrupt. <BR> <BR>Early Christian pacifism came from a clear reading of the Scriptures: ‘Thou shalt not kill’; ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’; ‘blessed are the peacemakers’; ‘love thine enemies’; summed up in the so-called Golden Rule: ‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them’. Early Christians were therefore convinced that any killing was murder, even in self-defence, and died in large numbers to prove the sincerity of their convictions. But the absolute pacifism and conscientious objection of early Christianity foundered when Constantine converted to Christianity. Now the official religion of a vast and powerful empire, the essentially subversive quality of Christian pacifism became an embarrassment. From St Augustine of Hippo to the present, Christian thinkers have sought a way to balance the dictates of their faith with the realities of a coercive and violent world, distilled surprisingly early in just-war theology. <BR> <BR>The way forward came from the belief that, as well as revelation, human reason could also provide the parameters for moral conduct. War and violence per se could be seen to be wasteful, unproductive, intemperate, irrational, and therefore immoral. The Stoics, from whom a good deal of Christian theology was borrowed, argued that the capacity for reason made all human beings equal; a brotherhood of man resting upon a universal moral law against which war was a gross infringement. The natural law thinking of the medieval Scholastics sought to blend ancient philosophy and rationalism with Christian theology, and to show that human reason need not be the antithesis to revealed religion, but could be a means by which to perceive and understand more closely the nature and purpose of divinity. While St Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the Scholastic philosopher-theologians, could not be described an absolute pacifist, his writing (particularly on just war) did establish firmly the principles of moderation and proportionality in warfare and self-defence, and in that sense contributed to the development of conditional pacifism. <BR> <BR>During the Renaissance, humanist philosophers and theologians such as Erasmus took a more absolutist line, rejecting the justification of war devised by Aquinas and arguing that it was repugnant, degrading and contrary to human nature, and that it both should and could be prevented. The 17th-century humanist Grotius, the founder of modern international law, saw war as a violation of universal, natural law and a denial of the natural human desire to associate peacefully with others. If war was to be undertaken, it could only be as a last resort and should be moderated on humanitarian grounds. The notion of war as an impediment to man's achievement of his full potential was taken up by Enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau, who saw human nature as inherently good and war as a perversion, and by Kant for whom war could be prevented by the spread of democracy. <BR> <BR>In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a more pragmatic approach to the philosophical discussion of war and peace came to the fore, with renewed emphasis on its consequences and costs (direct and opportunity) as a means by which to judge the morality of conflict and organized violence. Utilitarian philosophers such as Bentham and Mill (père) argued that their goal of reformed, civilized societies would result in a world in which war and conflict would be unnecessary and at worst an infrequent occurrence. This argument was amplified by the free-trade movement of the mid-19th century and J. S. Mill's argument that ‘commerce … is rapidly rendering war obsolete’. Cobden took the argument further by insisting that peace should be the purpose, rather than a mere attribute, of free trade. All of these arguments have proved durable and are occasionally reproduced with a flourish by contemporary thinkers, presented as though they had some new insight to offer. <BR> <BR>Pacifism encompasses so broad a range of often contradictory views that it cannot be considered a discrete and coherent school of thought. The absolute rejection of coercion remains deeply subversive of all governments and by definition cannot express itself in terms of public policy. Conditional pacifism does not have to be hypocritical, and acts as the principal moral moderator where the use of military force is concerned. It challenges old and new assumptions which inform debate and policy in such areas as nuclear deterrence, the concept of ‘surgical’ air attacks, and all the other ways in which violence is camouflaged with neutral words or even positive jargon. Whether absolute or conditional, pacifism provides an essential moral reference point and a counterweight to militarism and the glorification of war and violence. <BR> <BR>— Paul Cornish/Hugh Bicheno <BR><!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> <BR> <BR><a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/pacifism" target=_top>http://www.answers.com/topic/pacifism</a>
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Pacificism vs Pacifism <BR> <BR>Definitions: <BR> <BR>1. Pacificism: ‘war can not only be prevented but in time abolished by reforms which will bring justice in domestic politics too . . . . Pacificism rules out all aggressive wars and even some defensive ones . . . but accepts the need for military force to defend its political achievements against aggression.’ <BR> <BR>2. Pacifism: ‘the absolutist theory that participation in and support for war is always impermissible.’ <BR> <BR><a href="http://www.iipe.org/conference2002/papers/Alexandra.pdf" target=_top>http://www.iipe.org/conference2002/papers/Alexandr a.pdf</a> <BR> <BR>Maybe it is Pacifism I have been against all these years. How can anyone be against Pacificism
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