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Pacifism: The Case Against, Distilled

By Phil Elmore

I thought about it
during the last session of our class in History and Moral Philosophy. H.
& M. P. was different from other courses in that everybody had to
take it but nobody had to pass it — and Mr. Dubois never seemed to care
whether he got through to us or not. He would just point at you with the
stump of his left arm (he never bothered with names) and snap a
question. Then the argument would start.

But on the last day he seemed to be trying to find out what we had
learned. One girl told him bluntly: “My mother says that violence
never settles anything.”

“So?” Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. “I’m sure the
city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn’t your
mother tell them so? Or why don’t you?”

They had tangled before — since you couldn’t flunk the course, it
wasn’t necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up. She said shrilly,
“You’re making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was
destroyed!”

“You seemed to be unaware of it,” he said grimly. “Since
you do know it, wouldn’t you say that violence had settled their
destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you
personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a
practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically
untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that `violence never
settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon
Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The
ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the
Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled
more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary
opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic
truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”

He sighed. “Another year, another class — and, for me, another
failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him
think.”

– Heinlein, Starship Troopers

What is Pacifism?

Pacifism is the doctrine of non-violence. It is the
philosophy that the use of force is always wrong. It is the credo
that one may not hurt or kill another human being even when that person uses
physical violence against you or those you love. Pacifists may engage in
“nonviolent” resistance — that is to say, they may actively resist
even though they will not use what we would normally consider force — but they
will not fight.

A pacifist would attempt to place himself between his wife and
his wife’s would-be rapist, giving his life to “protect” her, but he
would not actually hurt or kill the rapist. The logical outcome of this
scenario is a dead husband and a violated wife (as well as an unbroken chain of
violated women in the future).

A group of pacifists might gather together to stand before an
advancing army and throw their bodies under the treads and wheels of the
invaders’ war machines, but they would not actually try to kill any of the
invaders. The logical outcome of this scenario is a pile of dead pacifists
and a sacked city (as well as an unbroken chain of sacked cities in the future).

False Moral Equivalency

The fundamental flaw of pacifism is that of false moral
equivalency. There is a difference between initiated and retaliatory
force. If
you do not make this distinction — if you do not see the difference between
attacking someone and defending against that attack — you are, in effect,
declaring both attacker and defender to be morally equal. You are saying
that there is no difference between the rapist and the raped, the mugger and the
mugged, the murderer and the murdered. You are saying that there is no
moral difference between the September 11th hijackers and those they slashed to
death, no difference between Osama bin Laden and those condemned to be torn and
blown to pieces in fiery collisions.

It is very easy to play the part of nihilist, of relativist,
wandering in the forest of affected profundity, wondering aloud if a distinction
between initiated and retaliatory force can really be made. Anyone
actually applying philosophy to life in a practical manner will
immediately perceive the difference. Our first social interactions with
other children are marked by the distinction, something as simple as
understanding who “started it” when two individuals come into
conflict.

If we have a verbal disagreement and I strike you, I have
initiated force. If we have a verbal disagreement and you tell me you are
going to strike me as you take a step toward me and cock your arm, I am using
retaliatory force when I strike you before you can complete your attack.
All conflicts in life are permutations of these simple examples. While the
complexity of these interactions on a national level can make moral judgment
much more difficult, it does not make necessary judgment impossible.

Physical force is coercion exercised by a physical
agency, such as punching a man or shooting him or stealing his
property. Initiating force means to START the use of force against an
innocent individual, one who has not himself started its use against
others.

Since men do not automatically come to the same conclusions, no code
of ethics can escape the present issue. The moralist has to tell men
how to act when they disagree (assuming they do not simply go their
separate ways). In essence, there are only two viewpoints on this
issue, because there are only two basic methods by which one can deal
with a dispute. The methods are reason or force; seeking to persuade
others to share one’s ideas voluntarily, or coercing others into doing
what one wishes regardless of their ideas.

When you use force, therefore, you attack a person’s body (or seize
his property) and thereby negate and dismiss as irrelevant his mind
(and his conclusions and wishes).

The function of the mind is to perceive reality by performing a
process of identification, and integrating the identified evidence
into a context in accordance with the rule of an objective methodology
(reasoning). This process presupposes a sovereign, volitional
consciousness and must be performed egoistically, individualistically,
and independently. It cannot, therefore, be forced.

To initiate force — to, essentially, order a man to accept a
conclusion against his own judgment — is to order him to accept as
true something that, according to what he knows, is not true (is
either arbitrary or false). This amounts to ordering him to believe a
contradiction; it is like demanding him to believe read is green, or 2
+ 2 equals 5. One can torture an individual and force him to say these
things, but one cannot make him truly believe them. Volition pertains
to the act of initiating and sustaining the process of thought. A
creature of volitional consciousness — man — cannot will himself to
accept as true that which he sees to be baseless or mistaken.

Force thus makes a man act against his judgment. The virtue of
rationality requires one to think, and then to be guided by his
conclusions in action. Force clashes with both these requirements.
Force used to change a man’s mind acts to stop his mind (and thus make
it inoperative as the source of his action). Force used to change a
man’s action shoves his mind (and thus its process of cognition) into
the trash heap of the purposeless.

He who initiates force to change another’s mind, therefore, works to
detach his victim’s consciousness from reality and therefore from
life. He who initiates force to change another’s action works to
detach his consciousness from life and therefore from reality.

— Leonard Peikoff

Attackers and defenders are not morally equivalent. A moral
difference exists between initiated and retaliatory force.
That same moral difference exists between initiated and preemptive force
(force taken to preempt a credible threat).

Contempt for All Life

Pacifists claim to want peace and believe they adhere to the doctrine of
nonviolence because they respect life. The practical results of pacifism,
however, are exactly the opposite: a total contempt for life. This
contempt extends beyond the individual pacifist to encompass all other human
beings.

Anyone who would die rather than use force, particularly when he or she is
more than capable of applying the force necessary to preserve his or her life,
shows contempt for the gift of that life, for the potential wasted when that
life is thrown away. By itself, then, pacifism is a self-immolating
doctrine whereby the logical standard of “good” — to promote and
sustain rational individual life — is discarded in favor of “peace”
at any price.

This peace would more accurately be termed unilateral surrender, in which
aggressors may hurt and even kill the pacifist before he or she will do more
than throw his or her body onto the sacrificial altar of passive resistance.
Few invading armies stop invading and go home out of disgust at the overwhelming
ease of conquering victims who will not fight back.

This contempt for life extends to the pacifist’s fellow human beings.
Aggressors are, by their natures, more likely to initiate force against
others if they demonstrate a willingness to initiate force against you.
If, when confronted with this evidence, you do nothing to preserve your own
life, you do nothing to make it more difficult for the aggressor to seek more
victims. If all you do is passively resist, throwing your life onto the
pyre of symbolic gestures, you are enabling the aggressor through your inaction.
The blood of any subsequent victims is on your folded hands.

If an aggressor knew that it was quite likely each victim he chose would
fight back, making his aggression an action fraught with risk, he would be more
reluctant to strike. If, on the other hand, he could expect his victims to
die nobly while resisting him passively, he could take his actions with
impunity, knowing that there was no danger to him in his predations.

Are Pacifists Cowards?

Some speculate that pacifists’ unwillingness to fight is
indicative of cowardice. There are many types of cowardice, however —
some obvious and some deeply buried. I think most pacifists actually
believe themselves to be very brave, in that they believe it is much more
difficult to refuse to use violence than to hurt or kill another human being.

This is true, in a way. It is much harder to
refuse to use force to protect yourself and your loved ones, to guard jealously
the gift of your life. This is because it is hard to fight your
nature as a human being, to actively resist the logical standard of value for
rational human life.

Fundamentally, pacifism is a doctrine, a philosophy, of inaction.
What is inaction, then, if not cowardice, however deeply rooted and
obscured by the layers of our beings? A given pacifist might indeed be
brave enough to speak out and to die, might indeed possess the
“courage” of his or her convictions. This is the
“courage” to throw one’s life away for a given cause, however noble.

Life, however, requires more than a willingness to die.
It requires the strength necessary to go on living, to stand and to fight
against evil, to actively oppose through forceful action the depredations of
society’s destroyers. It is not enough to throw one’s body under the
wheels of the advancing tanks. One must be willing to cover those tanks
with fire, lead those tanks into concealed pits, pry open the tanks’ hatches and
shoot and stab to death those who would seek to subjugate others by force.

Religious Motivations

Some adhere to pacifist doctrines in the belief that this is
required of them by the Divine. One may indeed labor under the notion that
a goddess, a god, or the God (however one chooses to look at it) would
ask you to die before standing up for the life that is rightfully yours, before
protecting those you love from others who would violate them. What manner
of evil, soul-destroying gods would these be?

The gods love us and take an interest in human affairs.
They are not cold creatures who would ask us to lie down and die simply because
one or more of our fellow humans demanded it. To think they could ask this
is to show contempt for the Divine itself, to embrace a delusion so antithetical
to human life that it is almost a preemptive plea for death.

Religious motivations are irrelevant in considering the practical
outcomes of pacifism. Pacifism is both evil and morally bankrupt
specifically because it is self-destructive and contemptuous of human life.
No rationale, no alleged dictate from the Divine, can change this.

The Alternative to Pacifism

Life is a struggle, but not a bleak one. To live life
actively, to live to the fullest of your being, is to stand your ground in the
face of the myriad forces and individuals who might oppose you,
dominating
every space you occupy and driving forward to do what you must, what you will.

To fight those arrayed against you, it is necessary to embrace
the arts of war. These are neither evil nor good in and of themselves.
They are simply the means to certain ends. You must reject the doctrine of
pacifism. You must embrace the alternative. You must steep yourself
in the knowledge required to wield the tools of war. You must train your
mind and your body in the skills required to accomplish this successfully.
You must be prepared to fight aggression, to oppose evil, to take action.
You must be willing to settle things.

You must be a martialist.

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