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<font face="Times New Roman, Times">Greetings:<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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 <i>A Force
More Powerful</i> 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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
For more on my work on Gandhi see
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vnv.htm" eudora="autourl">www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vnv.htm</a>.<br>
Thanks for the dialogue, Phil.<br><br>
Nick Gier</font></html>