How you behave dictates which wallet I grab...
("American Express -- don't leave home without it!")
Posted on 07/24/2006 10:42:24 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
Last week, Jack and Jill Pacifisto were walking home through the park after dinner with friends, during which they had spent a few hours discussing the immorality of violence and war and their commitments to send more money to progressive activists over the next year. Suddenly, Tony Thug stepped out of the shadows and pointed a pistol at Jack and said, “Give me your wallet,” and, pointing the gun at Jill, “Your purse.”
“What?” asked Jack, incredulous, “Hey, we don’t want any trouble. We’re pacifists. We aren’t going to hurt you.”
“Not my problem,” said Tony, “Gimme your money.”
So Jack and Jill did, and then Tony said, “And now gimme your watches, rings, jewelry, everything worth anything.”
“Hey,” said Jill, “This is my wedding ring!”
And Tony said, “Not my problem.”
Jack and Jill handed over their wallet, and purse, and all their jewelry and Rolex watches, and then Tony shot them both twice in the chest and picked up the loot and stepped back into the shadows.
As Jill lay dying she whispered, “Tony? Why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you have a gun?” Those were her last words.
“I couldn’t,” whispered Tony. “I’m a pacifist.” Those were his last words.
A few days later, Bill Thaxton and his wife were walking home through the park after dinner, when Tony Thug stepped out of the shadows.
“Give me your wallet, your purse,” said Tony, pointing his gun first at Bill, and then at his wife. He did not know that Bill was an old lawman, and had been a Marine sniper when he was young, and was active in the Single Action Shooters Society and had a concealed-carry-permit. Tony assumed that the old man was just an old man with some money and a few credit cards in his wallet walking home from dinner.
“Sorry, friend, I don’t like guns, and I don’t want any trouble,” said Bill.
“Not my problem,” said Tony, “Gimme your wallet, your purse,” he said, waving the gun at Bill’s wife, “Rings, watches, everything.”
“And what if I don’t?” asked Bill.
“I’ll shoot you both. Her first,” said Tony, pointing his gun at Bill’s wife again.
“Well,” said Bill, “Okay, honey, do what he says.”
She tossed down her purse. Bill reached slowly for his left lapel with his right hand and then, like lightning, did a cross-draw with his left and came out blazing with his trusty little 9, nailing Tony three times.
As he lay on the sidewalk dying, Tony Thug was heard to mutter, “Damn, I shoulda stuck with the pacifists . . .”
An acquaintance wrote me last week to tell me proudly how he had been a pacifist since the ‘60s. His letter set me thinking about pacifism, which is the ultimate and vilest form of immorality.
If you are Hitler, or Saddam, or Osama, or Ahmadinejad, your desire to kill those you dislike is at least honest and open. You wear you hate on your sleeve and we know who and what you are. But the Pacifist wears his refusal to resist evil as if it were a badge of honor, and claims it as a sign of his or her absolute moral superiority. The Hitlers and Osamas are at least honest about who they are, the Pacifist is not. Not even to himself.
The German Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote a poem circa 1946 about the quiescence of German intellectuals in the face of the Nazi rise to power that has become famous. Translated, it reads:
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent,
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists
I did not speak out,
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews
I did not speak out,
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me
there was no one left to speak out.
The Pacifist says something like this, but, unlike Niemoller, without apology. He says:
When you come for my allies
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my countrymen
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my neighbor,
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my mother,
my father, my brother,
my sister, I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my wife,
my husband, my son,
my daughter, I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for me,
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
The Pacifist claims that he (or she) is too good to fight against evil, and this is the catastrophic intellectual and moral failure of Pacifism. In the guise of being too good to oppose evil, the Pacifist invokes the ultimate immorality by aiding and abetting and encouraging evil, on the pretext of being too pure, too wise, too sophisticated to fight evil, thereby turning the pretense of goodness and purity into an invocation and license for evil to act without opposition.
The moral stance of the Pacifist is, unwittingly perhaps, homicidal, genocidal, fratricidal, suicidal. The Pacifist says, in effect: “There is nothing good worth fighting for. And there is nothing so evil worth fighting against.”
The Pacifist is willing to give evil free reign, because he or she thinks or feels that fighting against evil is even worse than evil itself . . . an intellectual and moral equivocation of monumentally staggering proportions. In order to be a Pacifist, one must hold that Nazism or Islamism or Communism or any other puritanical totalitarian ideology that seeks to slaughter or oppress all the Jews or all of any other race or tribe is no worse, is not morally inferior, to the existence of Jews and Judaism, or whatever other race or tribe is the whipping boy of the day.
To be a Pacifist, one must hold that acquiescence to a Jihad that seeks to destroy Western Civilization is no worse than Western Civilization, even though the Jihad seeks to extinguish intellectual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, and ultimately even the freedom to be a Pacifist.
As the English philosopher Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The Pacifist replies, “I am so good that I will do nothing, I will hurt no one, even if that means that good will be destroyed and evil will win. I am so peaceful that I will not discriminate between the goodness of good and the badness of evil, certainly not with enough conviction to take up arms, literally or figuratively, against the triumph of evil over good, of totalitarianism over freedom, of barbarianism over civilization.”
And so the Pacifist, perhaps unthinkingly, unwittingly, mistakenly, is deeply mired in his intellectual confusion, but surely and unequivocally, the epitome of evil itself, For the Pacifist devoutly believes that by refusing to fight against evil he is affirming that he is good, too good and pure to oppose evil, too good and pure to fight evil, to good and pure to kill evil. But in the end, he is the enabler without whom the triumph of evil would not be possible.
The story left out all the demands that we talk to the Thug, and that it is someone else's fault that the thug needed to rob people to live because of the terrible politics of someone else.
Need-to-read ping!
David Brooks said leftists should invent "Pacifist Toothpaste - it doesn't kill the germs in your mouth, it just asks them to leave."
I think she was saying that to Jack, and definitely not Tony.
Why did he change the ministers story? It actually went like this:
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
Pacifists believe that violence is not the only way to solve problems. Pacifists believe that violence is not the optimal way to solve problems. I'm sure most people, pacifist or not, would agree that violence is indeed neither the only way nor the best way to solve anything. The kicker is that pacifists will actively pursue nonviolent resolutions even in dire situations.
Dunno, but I've heard others change it in various ways as well...I wonder if people tend to forget the religious connotations when repeating it?
why does this remind me of Mike Dukakis ?
Or any other Dem, come to think of it.
Mr. Raymond Kraft said all that needs to be said on the subject of pacifism. Excellent post, Aussie Dasher. Thank you.
But when confronted with an objectively non-negotiable situation in which violence is to be used against the pacifist, the mere delays while the pacifist tries to accept the fact that he must fight or die will cost lives and treasurer. It is the inability to recognize when the jig is up in a timely fashion that gets everyone into hot water.
I know of very few ewho actuually look to violence as a first resort, either. But those who advocate pacifism often have no realistic and workable solution to a problem when there are people opposi9ng them that would like to kill them.
The other side of the coin is to decide if there are any values so impiortant that it is a good choice to defend them, even at the risk of personal harm or death to the pacifist or the country.
John Kerry is a great example...he claims that there would be no war in the mid-east if he were president, but I have never heard him encourage anyone in power to adopt the pacifist plan that he would have used to accomplish this miraculous feat.
He either has not plan, or he is hiding it to use it for his own political gain if he assumes power. I would hate to tyhink that is the case, and prefer to assume he has no plan at all.
In effect, he is claiming what you are claiming about pacifism...that there are other ways to solve the probvlem without a resort to violence. What is the way, Johnny boy? Save some lives and tell us, and do so quickly.
The New Living Version?
"I'm sure most people, pacifist or not, would agree that violence is indeed neither the only way nor the best way to solve anything."
BS, a lot of people disagree with you. Violence is a very good and expedient way to solve some problems, save lives, time and money right away.
If Hitler had been shot in the head for about 15 cents back in 1939, the world would have been spared a lot of lives and misery. Same for Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Kim Il Sung, Chavez and a whole lot of Iranian mullahs etc. The list is long.
Nothing like shooting the right son of a bitch in the head at the right time to save a lot of lives.
Let's kill a large portion of the Islamofascists right now and save a lot of time, money and misery or would you rather wait till they nuke NYC?
Sorry, but violence works and if done the right way it's cost effective and moral.
It's missing the required "I's be robbin' cause it's BUSH'S FAULT!(tm)!"
Pacifism is a way of rationalizing cowardice and spinelessness. Guess that's why it's so popular with liberals.
Pacifist or not, it’s a dumb idea have a shoot out with a mugger. Yeah, you might win, but you might loose. The $50 in your wallet along with the 20 minutes it will take to cancel your credit cards aren’t worth taking that sort of chance. Its one thing if you feel your life is in danger, but playing hero can have tragic results.
Well,
I would rather have a shoot out with a mugger than be empty handed and shot by an armed mugger. It's called leveling the playing field.
Boy, had this article been published on any of NZ's MSMs it could easily be deemed the most "offensive" article of 2006 by a majority of Kiwis! I think the reactions will truly show how left-leaning mainstream NZ really is.
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)
bttt
I don't recall that the pacifist was ever reluctant to call the police when trouble loomed; nor was he reluctant to enjoy the freedom of personal safety, freedom from violent conquest, and the freedom of democracy and the countless personal choices allowed him by the protection of the nation from tyrants - all furnished by those in the armed forces. There are no self-styled pacifists working actively for the disarmament of the police or agitating for the armed forces to be disbanded. Thus, content to exercise force by proxy, the pacifist is also typically a hypocrite.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
“But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), “The Contest in America.” Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 24, Issue 143, page 683-684. Harper & Bros., New York, April 1862.
There are so many versions of this story my efforts at research have not turned up an unequivocal original.
There was a bomb attempt on Hitler's life in '39, and only missed killing him because it was on a timer and he unexpectedly ended his speech 10 minutes early.
That quote is doubtful. I doubt the word "pacifist" existed back in his day
Keeper. ping
These protestors only seem to have a problem with a free people fighting to remain free or fighting to free someone else.
And, they will be glad to let other people's sons go in harms way to protect their right to have a croissant and latte with the NYT on Sunday morning. Other people and their sons who the pacifists don't know, and that the pacifists look down upon with contempt. Other people's sons whose blood drips off the pacifists fingers as much as it does off those of the terrorist filth because the pacifist (or Kerry/Dean faux pacifist) gave aid and encouragement to the terrorist filth by their limp wristed behavior.
BTTT
I saw an interesting bumper sticker the other day:
"I'm already against the next war"
Kind of sums up the pacifist mentality. When nothing is worth fighting for, you're left with nothing.
Ahhhh, you're ASSUMING that Tony is of the African-American persuasion. I say Tony is a Puerto Rican. Either way, let's play along. Jack & Jill are obviously white yuppies and Tony is a minority. Why could we not have had Juan and Angelina getting mugged and murdered by Ian McNamara? Happens everyday, right?
Pacifists were around during the WW2. I remember articles of George Orwell, whos a social democrat, who often voice disgust of pacifists
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
--John Stuart Mill
LOL!
Great article! I know a couple of pacifists that I would like to knock some sense into.
GOOD READ!
Bump for later!
I agree. Unless the pacifist enjoys the vicarious protection of his neighbor, community or nation, he will either be a slave or dead.
Justv curious. Why wouldn't he have mentioned the Catholics. It seems to me they were taking a beating during that time , especially the priests and nuns.
How you behave dictates which wallet I grab...
("American Express -- don't leave home without it!")
I know, but there were several attempts on Hitler's life during the course of the war. The last bomb attempt was in 44. It almost got him. Afterwards, Hitler had 200 people executed because of it.
Not that Wikipedia is the sine qua non of unbiased info, but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20_Plot
This is a keeper -- superb!
> I think the reactions will truly show how left-leaning mainstream NZ really is.
Funny, I was just thinking the same thing, running thru my mind which of our newspapers, publications &tc would have the stones the actually publish this.
Can't think of one.
Correction:
Pacifists believe that violence is NEVER a way to solve problems.
You nailed that one.
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