[Vision2020] The Virtue of Non-Violence

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:
I want to thank Phil Nisbet for agreeing that I've gone the extra mile with 
Wilson & Co.  His most recent comments on my views on nonviolence require a 
few comments. By the way, I'm replying to Ted Moffett's fine dissertation 
on the virtue of chastity off list.
Phil seems to think that teaching the virtue of nonviolence necessarily 
involves teaching pacifism.  This is simply not so. In the Boer War Gandhi 
recruited for the British army and he himself organized an ambulance corps 
that won many medals.  After many failed attempts to win Indian 
independence from the same Brits, he chose not to lend his support during 
World War II.  He no longer viewed himself as a British subject but as a 
proud citizen of a sovereign India.
If Gandhi had joined the many armed groups against British rule, he would 
now only be a footnote to Indian history.  His own perception of the truth 
of the Indian situation was that his engaged (not passive) nonviolence 
could win the battle without firing a single shot.  Despite the horrors of 
Partition, which were not his fault, Gandhi's victory was seminal and his 
strategy has worked in more political situations that most people 
recognize.  In their book A Force More Powerful Peter Ackerman and Jack 
Duvall (2003 Borah Symposium speakers) document nonviolent revolutions for 
political rights in the American South, Iran, Poland, Argentina, Chile, the 
Philippines, Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, Mongolia, the Ukraine, and 
Georgia.  Gandhi has proved that armed rebellion against oppression is not 
always necessary.
Gandhi was terribly equivocal about Nazi Germany, and today's Gandhians 
tend to think that his philosophy would not have worked there or in 
Saddam's Iraq or in Western Dafur.  German women in Berlin staged a 
successful protest to get their Jewish husbands out of prison, but it is 
very unlikely that this would have worked elsewhere in Nazi Germany.
  Gandhi did not believe that nonviolence was absolute; he did not even 
believe that it was the highest value.  For him truth was the highest value 
and courage was next highest. Gandhi's truth was a personal truth drawn 
from experience, and this determination always dictated what his actions 
should be.  In a famous passage Gandhi said that it was worst to be a 
coward than to aggress against someone.  Indian men who deserted their 
village while under attack by bandits were roundly condemned by Gandhi as 
cowards, the full implication being that they should have stood their 
ground and defended their families.  Gandhi would have agreed with David 
Hume, who said that we all have a duty to be benevolent except when we find 
ourselves in a gang of ruffians.  The ruffians of the world do not have 
consciences: Gandhi assumed that the British did and his hunch paid off.
We should teach our children that violence is never morally necessary, but 
that it is practically necessary in some instances.  If I am giving refuge 
to a friend who is being sought by a maniac bent on killing him, and if 
this fiend comes to my door asking if my friend is there, I will make up 
the most convincing lie that I can muster.  Utilitarians, who believe that 
the ends justifies the means, would say that my lie is somehow "right," but 
this is absurd.  It is always wrong to lie, just as it is always wrong to 
kill, but after instances of expedient lying or justified killing we do not 
become either liars or killers.  No, we return to what should be deep 
grained habits (=virtues) of truth telling and nonviolence.
For more on my work on Gandhi see www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vnv.htm.
Thanks for the dialogue, Phil.

Nick Gier
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