# Pacifists - what's your threshold? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 24, 2001, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294 "2001-10-24T11:56:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/1 "2001-10-24T11:56:11Z")
So, apparently, in the eyes of some people, a Navy vessel, two embassies, several office buildings and several thousand lives aren’t enough to justify military action. For the pacifists here, a question – at what point do attacks on the United States justify fighting back? A smallpox outbreak that kills 20,000? Sarin at a football game in an indoor dome? Suitcase nukes that take out downtown Chicago and 300,000 lives, and throw the country into a depression? When do you think it’s an appropriate point to start defending ourself? Or … do you think we should _never_ strike back, under any circumstances, due to principle, the thought that we’re paying back “America’s karmic debt,” or some other reason? ---
**Author:** ![grimpixie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@grimpixie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grimpixie)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/2 "2001-10-24T12:34:14Z")
Speaking as a naive, idealistic pacifist-wannabe, I would **always** look for an alternative solution to violence. This soes not mean sitting there, doing _nothing_ but wait for the next attack, nor does it mean taking no action to prevent further attacks, but it does proclude war. I do need to declare that I have yet (thank God) to experince a loved one being hurt or my country attacked or my safety threatened to any great degree. When I have experienced any of these things, I will revise my opinion, but until then… Gp ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/3 "2001-10-24T12:41:18Z")
**elmwood** , the way you posit the question is rather like “when are you going to admit that I’m right and you’re full of it”. Hardly fair. Pacifism, by definition, means that no such line is ever met, much less crossed. It is an absolute ideal. The instant a pacifist accepts violent self-defense of any stripe, whatsoever, that person ceases to be a pacifist. By definition, therefore, the answer has to be “never”. ---
**Author:** ![CnoteChris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/278dde/32.png) [@CnoteChris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CnoteChris)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/4 "2001-10-24T12:41:48Z")
What I’ve always wondered about is whether or not pacifist are guilt ridden about _everything_ in life. Because, to me, pacifism seems like one giant guilt trip. ---
**Author:** ![TomH](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/90db22/32.png) [@TomH](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TomH)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/5 "2001-10-24T12:42:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by elmwood \* > Or … do you think we should _never_ strike back, under any circumstances, due to principle… Er, yes. That is what a pacifist is: somebody who rejects violence as a means of settling disputes. And even if you’re not a pacifist, the question is not only whether the attacks on the USA justify a violent response, but what kind of response is justified and against whom. It is possible to believe that the current military action is misguided, misdirected and lacking in clear, achievable objectives without believing that violence is an inappropriate response _per se_. ---
**Author:** ![horowitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/2acd7d/32.png) [@horowitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/horowitz)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/6 "2001-10-24T15:23:07Z")
I think maybe it would be reached if terrorists blew up a few Starbucks or a Hacky Sack factory. Ok I’m a smart ass so shoot me. ---
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/7 "2001-10-24T15:55:03Z")
I guess I’m with grimpixie. I should also point out that my views would probably get me thrown out of any self-respecting pacifist organization. I don’t see pacifism as being a one-sided thing (as in, they do whatever they want, we’ll just sit here and do nothing). I think that pacifists have to work for worldwide peace. The end result being, of course, that no terrorist would hate enough to kill innocents. Other conflicts that lead to the need for armed response and a show of force would also be non-existent. In the short term, seeing that this is unattainable immediately, I do think defense is needed, as is occasional force to ensure justice is done. Just like cops use guns when they apprehend criminals, I think our military must be armed when they go after world criminals. BUT–I can only support this with a clear conscience if I know that at the same time, we (or some pacifists with good resources) are thinking about long-term solutions that promote peace and understanding and eliminate future violent conflicts. That means on their side as much as ours. Perhaps you could summarize my view by saying I’m a pacifist that supports military spending but I think we ought to be matching every one of those defense dollars with dollars spent on worldwide education, cooperation, and compassion initiatives. With the long term goal of having to spend less and less on defense in the future. Otherwise I feel we’re just doing the “Screwing for Virginity” thing–“Arming for peace.” I am sure a true pacifist would smack me with a pie in the face for my hypocrisy. I prefer to call it practicality in the face of how far we have to go. ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/8 "2001-10-24T17:49:38Z")
To quote Gandhi: From “Love Not Hate” _Mahatma Gandhi: Selected Political Writings_ Pg 46 > [@](#): > > I believe in non-violence as the only remedy open to the Hindus, Muslims, Sihs, Parsis, Christians and Jews…I believe in the power of suffering to melt the stoniest heart. From “On the Verge of It” pg 43 > [@](#): > > I swear by non-violence because I know that it alone conduces to the highest good of mankind, not merely in the next world by in this also. I object to violence because, when it appears tod o good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. From “Non-Violence” pg 41 > [@](#): > > When a person claims ot be non-violent, he is expted not to be angry with one who has injured him. He will not wish him harm; he will wish him well; he will not swear at him; he will not cause him any physical hurt. He will put up with all the injury to which he is subjected by the wrongdoer. Thus non-violence is ocmplete innocence. Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill will agianst all that lives…Non-violence is thereofre in it’s active from, goodwill to all life. It is pure Love… > Relatiation is indulgence recquire elaborate regulating. Restraints is the law of our being. For, highest perfecton is unattainable without restraints. Suffering is thuse the badge of the human tribe. Since I couldn’t say it better than Gandhi, I thought I’d just post a few quotes from him for clarity. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/9 "2001-10-24T17:58:01Z")
And I assume you recall how Gandhi died, too. A flower will not stop a bullet. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/10 "2001-10-24T18:01:11Z")
The good thing about pacifists is that you can bomb their peace rallies and beat them senseless and you can still sleep well at night knowing that they will not attack you back. I wish that more things in life were that accommodating. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/11 "2001-10-24T18:26:04Z")
But Gandhi was prepared to die for what he believed in. And the Brits did leave India. ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/12 "2001-10-24T18:26:24Z")
[More from Gandhi](http://www.mahatma.org.in/): > [@](#): > > A principle is a principle, and in no case can it be watered down because of our incapacity to live it in practice. We have to strive to achieve it, and the striving should be conscious, deliberate and hard. **gobear** : > [@](#): > > Hatred ever kills, love never dies such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred. **Shagnasty** : > [@](#): > > It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one’s belly, in order to be able to save one’s head. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/13 "2001-10-24T18:51:51Z")
I am a pacficistic realist. I’m not gonna stand there aand give the peace sign if someone is about to shoot me. But I do believe that giving in to the desire to hurt others when you are hurt solves nothing. Violence should be the last resort, and then used in a very narrow fashion, with the end goal being ONLY self-defense. stoid ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/14 "2001-10-24T18:53:55Z")
I agree that pacifism or non-violence is the ideal. Like Communism, it looks good on paper, but it doesn’t work in practice. In a perfect world, if everyone practiced pacifist policies, then it would work. Passive resistance may have worked in India in the end, but would it have worked for France, Poland, Holland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, or Greece in late the 1930s and early 1940s? No. Let me try to word my question another way. If you’re opposed to the “War on Terrorism,” at what point would you sacrifice principles for lives? BTW, I’m otherwise a bleeding heart liberal. ---
**Author:** ![curious\_george](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b487fb/32.png) [@curious\_george](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curious_george)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/15 "2001-10-24T18:58:59Z")
I’m not sure what the best response to terrorism is. However, mnost of the media and the country is in a state of war frenzy. My posts on this board are merely to offer a different point of view. There are a lot of issues regarding the current global situation. We need to look at the lessons of history and the big picture. The US is the mightiest nation on Earth. To a lot of countries, I think the US is seen as a global bully who tries to have their way too often. A socialist would argue, as long as their inbalances in the distribution of wealth and power, there will be conflict. Isn’t that what Marxism is all about? ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/16 "2001-10-24T19:18:10Z")
> [@](#): > > But Gandhi was prepared to die for what he believed in. And the Brits did leave India One has nothing to do with the other. Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist who thought Gandhi was making too many concessions to the Muslims. The Brits left India, not because of Gandhi, but because the war had exhausted their ability to hold the empire together. Xenophon41, the quote doesn’t make one lick of sense. We aren’t fighting out of hatred. (Didja notice we’re feeding the refugees? Hard to do that out of hate.) We’re fighting the Taliban because they are shielding the people who murdered 5000 of your fellow citizens. This is not a war; it’s a police action to apprehend OBL. Curious George, what Marxism is about, is about ten years past any relevance to modern politics. I agree with Cranky that looking for long-term solutions to releive poverty and help third-world nations will go a long way to defusing hatred of the US. ---
**Author:** ![Mandelstam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Mandelstam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mandelstam)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/17 "2001-10-24T19:30:07Z")
**elmwood** : _" If you’re opposed to the “War on Terrorism,” at what point would you sacrifice principles for lives?"_ elmwood, you assume here that those who oppose the war as it’s now being conceived and fought, oppose it on principle (i.e. on ethical grounds). In actuality, some also oppose it, or instead oppose it, on grounds of pragmatism, that is, _they believe that conventional military force with heavy civilian casualities will not defeat terrorism and they believe, rather, that it will exacerbate it._ Hope that helps. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/18 "2001-10-24T19:43:57Z")
I would also submit that most of the Gandhi quotes are being cited out of historical context. Gandhi was not fighting a genocidal madman, but an imperial occupier with a moral conscience that could be appealed to. Gandhi’s goal was to make the British relinquish control of India by making it ungovernable through non-violent resistance. Non-violent resistance has a flaw in that it only works if your enemy can be made to feel ashamed. From [Echoes of the Holocaust](http://www.rossel.net/Holocaust13.htm) by Seymour Rossel: > [@](#): > > Gandhi’s approach relied on the power of moral example. In nonviolent resistance, the victim sets the example, and sooner or later the persecutor is forced by the weight of public opinion to back down. (This idea was later used by some leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States, particularly by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) > > Yet in the ghettos and camps of the Holocaust, millions had set an example of moral courage through nonviolent resistance–without any effect at all on Nazi policy or behavior. Moreover, Gandhi himself was killed by an assassin–as was Dr. King in the United States. Bin Laden, Al-Quaeda, and the Taliban cannot be appealed to by moral suasion because their sense of morality and ours are different. We value freedom, tolerance, and pluralism; they value adherence to a rigidly narrow religious code. To them, women with bare faces are harlots who deserve to be beaten. To them, Israelis and Americans are infidel scum who deserve to be killed anywhere they can be found (Bin Laden isued a _fatwa_ using those words in 1998). Do you really think you can stop airplanes flying into buildings and anthrax in the mail by singing “Kum Ba Ya” and going on hunger strikes? ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/19 "2001-10-24T19:45:53Z")
I didn’t say they did have relationship with each other. Gandhi was prepared to die for his beliefs. He did die for his beliefs. The “and” was meant, as “Oh, and another thing that just occurred to me as a type this…” the Brits did, in fact, leave India. The only reason that pacifism won’t work is because everybody is convinced that it would not work. If every single person took it upon themselves to work towards non-violence and peace, then the world would achieve it. Unfortunately, everybody is concerned with what the other guy is doing. “Well, I’d try it if person X and Person Y would, but they won’t, so it’s pointless.” I think that’s the wrong attitude. And I’m kinda disturbed by the presumption that pacifism is OK as long as nothing bad happens. Uh…what’s the point in being a pacifist if you only live that way when it’s popular? ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2001, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294/20 "2001-10-24T19:48:33Z")
> [@](#): > > _ **gobear** said:_ > Xenophon41, the quote doesn’t make one lick of sense. We aren’t fighting out of hatred. (Didja notice we’re feeding the refugees? Hard to do that out of hate.) We’re fighting the Taliban because they are shielding the people who murdered 5000 of your fellow citizens. This is not a war; it’s a police action to apprehend OBL. **gobear** , the quote was not in regards to the current situation in Afghanistan; it was how I thought Gandhi might have responded to your comment that “a flower will not stop a bullet.” It was intended to show how the foremost pacifist on record felt about the power of pacifism in relation to political violence (such as assassinations). FTR, I’m not advocating pacifism as a response to terrorism, or as a foreign policy. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pacifists-whats-your-threshold/89294.md?page=2)