Are you a Pacifist?

Are you? Do you wear a white poppy for Peace? Do you consider yourself a follower of Ghandi? Do you follow Ghandi’s teaching? Would you do as he said the British should do:

"I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions.... If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them."(from Wikipedia)

Is that advice you would follow? If someone wanted your house, would you simply vacate and move on? If I punch you in the nose, will you punch me back? What if someone threatens to rape or kill your wife or girlfriend, husband or boyfriend? Will you stand by? For your son or daughter, too?

Will you call the police? If you do, you must realize you are asking another to do violence on your behalf. Is that really pacifism? Isn’t that just cowardice?

At least Ghandi was a compassionate fellow in that he allowed that not all peope were as perfectly non-violent as he. He felt that non-violence born of cowardice was useless:

"I do believe,' he wrote, 'that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence."

Here’s what I think. I believe most of the pacifist horde, the holier than holy group handing out the white poppies, are nothing but cowards, and selfish cowards at that. They don’t want war, they don’t want violence, but they demand the protection of the police and the courts. They want violence done on their behalf, and at their direction only, and only for their own benefit. They cannot, or will not, see the value in doing violence unless it is directly related to them. The needs of an Afghan school-girl, or an Israeli kibbutzer are just too remote. It’s so much easier, intellectually and physically, to just parrot that all war is bad. They don’t need to think of the consequences of those thoughts because there will always be others, more intelligent and practical, who will be willing to do violence to protect them and their selfishness.

"Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." - George Orwell

Pacifism in the richest nations of the world, in the face of gross violence and killings of innocents in foreign nations, behind the protection of others willing to do violence, is nothing but cowardice. That’s what you are if you are a pacifist in Canada.