(That would be me. Not often, but I don't shrink from it. I seem to be genetically predisposed.)

Hi, Tom!

The considerable list you provided of wonderful soundbites from the illustrious and the famous and the nearly unknown includes a boxed feature quite a way down with a link reading "Pacifism Empowers Terrorism".

I disagree. "Cowardice Empowers Terrorism", yes. Definitely. Pacifism, however, has motivated a very powerful form of resistance against social injustice of all kinds: non-violent resistance. Its results are not quick, for it takes a long time to change people's minds, which is its objective. Passive resistance seeks to obtain recognition by those in power and by the society as a whole that the positions of a society on a particular set of issues is fundamentally unjust. Passive resistors inspire bewilderment, shame, sympathy and ultimately fellowship among those who oppose them, and will ultimately change the way a society thinks by appealing to conscience. They do this by laying their own lives on the line. It's another kind of warfare -- effective, and not at all cowardly.

Violence will alter people's behavior by the use of force, and is effective for as long as more force can be either threatened or applied. In a just cause, violence can be justified, because the offensive behavior must be stopped immediately for the greater good, and only then can the task of rebuilding the way people think about things be attempted through non-violent means. Also, it's impossible to appeal to conscience if those being fought have no conscience. I believe we are in a situation like that right now.

We will always need our pacifist warriors because, without the good they do, we will win the war only to lose the struggle. They provide the example for long-term change. The pacifist Quakers gave us the model of religious tolerance in America in their Pennsylvania colony. Franz Jagerstatter, now regarded as a martyr, passively resisted Nazism and provided an example of courage for other pacifists faced with great evil. Gandhi brought Imperial India to an end in relative peace through passive resistance (though Jinnah thwarted him in the end and brought the spectre of religious violence, which threat we still see today). Martin Luther King, taking a page from Gandhi, changed the minds of a nation within a generation, an achievement so great that we think of it as only common sense today. He was helped by many courageous civil rights workers, some of whom were beaten and even killed as they pursued their goal through non-violence. In one of the great acts of wisdom of the 20th century, the Truman administration, under the direction of General George Marshall, continued the World War after the conclusion of hostilities by using American economic might to fight chaos, poverty and hate, thus reaching into the hearts of the enemy to change them with moral courage, generosity and self-sacrificing service, the hallmarks of pacifism in its truest form.

Along with the blockheads in this county, I have been privileged to know, and to learn to understand, people whose faith counsels pacifism and good works: Mennonites and Christian Brethren. Some of these people pursue lives of service to others. I have neighbors who have braved places of great physical peril, both in America and in other nations, to bring help to those in need. Some of the peril has been the result of political turmoil, yet they go with saws and hammers, with bandages and drugs, and not with guns. Their own moral compasses forbid them to travel in that direction. Though they have expressed appreciation for my big mouth (because people like me will take the point on some issues important to them), I admire their self-control. Their example helps me to learn mastery over my anger, so that I can direct its energy in effective ways. My cultural heritage of battle-rage, aided and abetted by the American frontier ethic, guarantees that I will never be one of them, but we have all been changed, for the better I hope, by the interaction.

To confuse pacifism with cowardice gives a dignity to cowardice that it does not deserve. To each his own way to resist evil. We need them all.

Regards--
Mary Anne