Why I Love War (Sic)

 

Apparently I’m a neo-con. I’m a war pig. I’m a tool of the military-industrial complex. For I fully support Donald Trump’s bombing of Iran’s embedded nuclear facilities. 

This, I am told, threatens the MAGA coalition. Prominent voices on the right like Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens are in open revolt.

To me the principle is simple. In the words of Edmund Burke, “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Or, in the worlds of the Bible, we are our brother’s keepers. Consider the Kitty Genovese thought experiment. If I see a woman being raped in an alley, or hear her screaming rape in the stairwell, I have the moral duty to intervene. I can’t just walk by or keep the door shut and say “Not my business.”

So too among nations. Pacifism is grossly immoral, and leads to more war. If aggressors expect to meet  swift and harsh consequences, they will not attempt anything.

This is why we have police departments, and why we call them “peace officers.”

By bombing Iran now, Trump makes a truly apocalyptic future war less likely. He is preventing Iran from making nuclear weapons. And he is making others too think twice about disturbing the peace. With no loss of American lives, at this point, and for all we know, no loss of Iranian lives either. 

I can understand why Americans are weary of what they call “forever wars.” To be fair, I also supported Bush going into Iraq and Afghanistan. Now widely considered mistakes.

I still don’t think they were. In fact, the taking of Baghdad and Kabul were quick and almost bloodless.  The mistake was not going in; it was staying. It was the delusional, neo-colonial thought that America could “nation build,” impose democracy on any random country. This is a contradiction in terms: you cannot force someone to be free, or dictate democracy. 

America should have done as I advised at the time: go in, take out Saddam or the Taliban, hand the palace keys to someone else, and leave. 

They should do the same in Iran. I hope Trump is smart enough not to repeat the mistake. Destabilize the Iranian regime to the point where the Iranian people can, if they have sufficient will, take matters into their own hands. Then leave it to them.

On Standing Up to Bullies

 

I am what is referred to these days by many as a “war pig.” That is, I endorse military aid to Ukraine. I endorse Israel’s pacification of Gaza.

I believe those who object, saying it is “none of our business,” and we should not be sending money overseas when there are serious problems at home, are being cowardly and selfish. 

Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan: we find Ukraine or Israel set upon by robbers and left lying in a ditch. It is our responsibility to help.

Remember Edmund Burke’s caution: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Moreover, collective security requires that acts of aggression against anyone not be allowed to succeed. Ensuring that aggression does not succeed is the surest way to ensure peace internationally, just as having a police force is the surest way to ensure peace domestically. We cannot honourably duck our responsibility and hope someone else does it.

I think it likely that the current turmoil in Ukraine has much to do with the disorderly American pullout from Afghanistan, which seemed to signal a lack of resolve.

Suggesting we should not send money abroad when there are needs at home is the fallacy of the false alternative. The one does not necessarily preclude the other.

If those who endorse unilateral pacifism really thought they had an argument, they would not resort to namecalling and would not try to dismiss pro-intervention positions out of hand.

We don’t want war; that’s why we must fight.

The End to War All Wars

 

I am left uneasy by a poetry reading I attended last week. There was no planned theme, but perhaps unsurprisingly, given events in Gaza, poems tended to focus on the horrors of war. My own contribution too, actually. What troubled me was how the moderator, summing up, suggested we were all, by saying war was bad, speaking out boldly to end war and change the world.

That, it seemed to me, was offensive. I cannot go so far as to say everyone agrees war is bad; the Fascists liked it. But it is the opposite of controversial to say so. By saying so, the poet is accomplishing absolutely nothing for anyone but himself, by washing his hands of the affair. Such a stance ought to be condemned, not praised. It is the stance of Pontius Pilate.

It further annoys me that people put such emphasis on killing civilians—as though it is perfectly okay that any number of soldiers die. The average soldier has no more control over war and peace than the average woman or child; killing him is just as wrong. Unless men’s lives don’t matter.

The necessary task is to propose how we might end this war, or war in general. Simply lamenting war is doing more harm than good: it gives succor to the aggressor.

In my defense, my own contribution proposed, in poetic terms, that all life is war until and unless we turn to God.

And that was a problem for those assembled: it violated “the separation of church and state,” one participant observed.

Not that “separation of church and state” is in the Canadian Constitution or Charter of Rights, or for that matter the US Constitution. And certainly not in Britain’s, which recognizes an established church. Not that that is a basic liberal principle that would have been propounded or recognized by John Locke. But all references to God or morality are now excluded from public discussion. Or rather, they are excluded unless you are Muslim.

Which is fatal to social and individual peace, because they are the solution to literally everything. And I mean literal in the literal sense.

Confessions of a Warmonger

 

There is these days a strong isolationist sentiment in the US, on both the left and the right. Many have been questioning why NATO still exists—after all, the Cold War is over. The Russian invasion of Ukraine gave it a new lease on life, but as that war has dragged on, the questions are being raised again.

I think such talk is both foolish and immoral.

The point of NATO, and of supporting Ukraine, is collective security. If a large enough group of countries pledges to defend one another in case of any external attack, war becomes far less likely. It is the same principle on which, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, governments are instituted among men: to mutually defend our rights.

Just as it is immoral to stand by and do nothing if you see a woman being raped, or a child tortured, it is immoral to stand by and do nothing when you see one country invaded by another. You cannot honourably say it is not your business, that “most Americans don’t even know where Ukraine is.” We are our brothers’ keeper.

What about Afghanistan, you might ask. What about Vietnam? Doesn’t the US keep getting into trouble by sticking its nose in?

In Afghanistan, the US was naïve in thinking it could impose democracy. The proper approach would have been good old gunboat diplomacy: go in, overthrow the government pull out, let the cowchips fall where they may. In Vietnam, the US was not engaged in collective security, and arguably the aggressor, since the Viet Cong were not a foreign invader. The moral case was unclear.

The naïve might suggest that keeping world peace is what the UN is for. But the UN is almost invariably ineffective in stopping aggression, or attacks on human rights; all it can generally do is send in peacekeepers to avoid incidents once a treaty is signed. The UN includes everyone, and most governments do not share any real commitment to human rights or the good of mankind. On top of that, a couple of the most likely aggressors have vetoes. Let the UN set up a panel on human rights, and Saudi Arabia, say, Iran, China, or North Korea will likely be on it.

NATO is, by contrast, a coalition of liberal democracies. They do share essential values, and so can act together if needed. Moreover, their interests are unlikely to seriously conflict: there is rarely any point in one democracy going to war with another. Should they conquer any of a neighbour’s territory, after all, those people too must be given a vote, and so the change is relatively trivial to either people or government. Unlikely to be worth a war.

Accordingly, NATO can have a vital role as a de facto world government. It indeed ought to be expanded, not just to include Ukraine, but to include Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Singapore. 

This collective security system would protect democracy. It would also give currently autocratic nations a strong incentive to go democratic: it would allow them protection by this security umbrella.

Conversely, on the other hand, if any member country slipped away from the democratic fold, it ought, by vote of the other members, to be expelled. This loss o the security guarantee should make this less likely to happen. Currently, the one problem member is Turkiye—for this reason. Under Erdogan, it has become more autocratic.

So go ahead—call me a neocon. Call me a shill for the military-industrial complex. I’m into world peace. Sorry.

Pacifism and the War in Ukraine

 

A number of commentators, both left and right, have taken the position that it is wrong for the US, or Canada, to be involved in the fighting in Ukraine.

This position is morally depraved. The worst of it is that it masquerades as a superior morality. It is the devil’s work.

There are snide, self-serving suggestions that Ukraine is corrupt, and its ruling elite has bribed the American leadership into giving support. Hunter Biden doesn’t help.

This is not plausible. They must then also have bribed Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Latvia, Morocco, Denmark, … over fifty countries who have sent material aid. If we are getting into bribery, Russia would be able to outspend Ukraine on that battlefield. And Putin, ex-KGB, would surely have thought of it.

First point: every man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. The people of Ukraine, or Russia, are just as much our brothers as those biologically linked to us. We share the same father. That they are separated from us by distance means nothing; considering that significant would be like supposing, if we close our eyes, the thing is not happening. 

Second point: the rights and wrongs of the situation are clear. Russia invaded Ukraine.

Whenever there is conflict, the default assumption needs to be that it is a fight of right against wrong. Nine times out of ten, there is no “misunderstanding” to be negotiated. Strife breaks out because someone without moral constraints thinks they can take something from someone whom they think is in a weaker position. This is not always so, but must be the default assumption. “A plague on both your houses” works in the case of a vendetta, but is usually moral sophistry. And it amounts to blaming the victim at the moment of his or her victimization. This is weasel morality.

Third point: in the face of evil, we are required to come to the defense of the victim. As Edmund Burke said, “All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.” This is inherent in the essential scenario: conflict occurs when someone stronger tries to take something from someone weaker. If no one intervenes, evil will always triumph.

Fourth point: Refusing to become involved, on the plea of “pacifism,” is simply cowardice. It is not even in one’s own long-term self-interest. If aggression succeeds, more aggression can be expected, and sooner or later you yourself will be the victim. 

And, as C.S. Lewis has explained, courage is the one essential virtue. Without it, none of the other virtues can exist. There is virtue only in something difficult or dangerous to do. In any other case, you are simply acting in immediate self-interest, or on a whim.

There is no moral ambiguity here.

Kipling's Recessional

 

Recessional

God of our fathers, known of old,

   Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

   Dominion over palm and pine—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;

   The Captains and the Kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

   An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;

   On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

Such boastings as the Gentiles use,

   Or lesser breeds without the Law—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust

   In reeking tube and iron shard,

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

For frantic boast and foolish word—

Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Rudyard Kipling could hardly be less fashionable in these anti-colonial days. He was a promoter of empire. Worse, like Trump, he was a populist. He wrote for the common man. 

He has also never been to my taste. His prose seems unnecessarily foggy at most times; he rarely seems to make an interesting point. I won Puck of Pook’s Hill as a prize back in grade school, and could never get my head into it. In both poetry and prose, his upper lip is far too stiff for my Irish Catholic temperament. All that English stuff about doing your dooty and dying at the drop of a hat for king and law. Sounds blasphemous to this Mick.

Yet I cannot deny his immense skill as a poet. In the craft of casting memorable lines, he puts anyone writing today in the shade. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the youngest person ever at that time, and the first Englishman.

He is the ultimate “people’s poet.” His poem “If…” for all its weird Englishness remains the most popular poem in England. 

I was recently looking again at “The Recessional,” with my students. I think it is his best poem.

Perhaps we ought to see what he has to say. In this poem, at least, I think he does go deep.

The first point I think he makes worth making is that the British Empire is under God’s dominion, and derives its legitimacy by doing God’s work. God is “Lord of our far-flung battle line.” He is “Lord God of Hosts”—of armies.

Kipling is right. To the extent that any government can claim legitimacy, it is because and to the extent that it is doing God’s will. This is more or less the same point made in America’s Declaration of Independence.

Does God then command the armies? Does he play favourites among combatants?

Of course he does. Pacifism is not a Judeo-Christian principle. God plainly favours the Israelites in battle in the Old Testament; the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Seleucids, the Egyptians, are unambiguously villains.

What is unique about the Judeo-Christian tradition is the idea that God expresses his will and his divine plan through human history. That means in any given war, one side is probably doing his will, and the other side is with the devil.

More broadly, the creation is an eternal war between good and evil. We are to take up our sword and defend the right. Pacifism is simply moral cowardice. 

This ought to be clear enough to natural reason. Whenever a fight breaks out, between two individuals, two groups, or two nations, it is almost inevitably an aggression by one party against the other. Why else? Misunderstandings can be talked through. One party merely calculates it is stronger, and can take what it wants. 

The current war in Ukraine is an example. No, there are not perfectly balanced rights and wrongs on either side. Russia wanted to control Ukraine, and thought they were strong enough to do it.

And here we even also see the hand of God. Who could have predicted that Ukraine would hold out and begin to advance? A close analysis of history actually does suggest that, given anything approaching equality of forces, the side in the right always wins. This is true because we all have a conscience, and it weakens us when we go against it.

So the question is whether the British Empire was rapacious, or was doing the will of God. This is exactly the question Kipling asks, and struggles over.

Being an Empire by itself does not figure: it is neither good nor bad. There is no moral value in being governed by people with the same skin colour or ethnicity as yourself. The question is whether the British brought better and more moral government than the governments they replaced.

Kipling would no doubt see them as doing God’s work in ending slavery, ending the caste system in India, suppressing human sacrifice, toppling oppressive rulers in Africa who practiced cannibalism, ending interminable tribal wars, and so forth. All of which they certainly did. Along with instituting governing structures and infrastructure that successor regimes have almost never seen fit to discard. 

It was no doubt in Kipling’s eyes the world’s police force, introducing and protecting human rights. At a minimum, the case must be made that it was not, that it was oppressive and self-interested. It cannot be assumed.

The usual claim, I suppose, is that Britain exploited the colonies financially, leaving them poorer than they had been. It can certainly be argued that mercantilist policies might do this; but trade generally benefits both parties. And my impression is that the actual numbers do not bear that out.

But this is background. This is not the key message of the poem. It is, rather, that the British might lose their grip on this moral foundation, like “lesser breeds without the law.” 

Who are these lesser breeds?

“Gentiles.” “Heathens.” The distinction made is not racial, but religious. 

And Kipling is more specific: 

Heathen heart that puts her trust

   In reeking tube and iron shard

Kipling is not talking about African tribalists or Amerindian natives. Iron shards are products of the Industrial Revolution, not stone age cultures. Reeking tubes are most obviously found in chemistry labs.

Kipling is warning against “scientism,” the worship of science and technology as our new God. Which is indeed the disease that is currently killing Western civilization.

The prime danger of scientism is that it has no morality. It is “without the law.” 

Kipling was writing ten years after Nietzsche had published Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals, arguing that man had now replaced God and could create his own morality to suit his purposes.

Such boasting as the gentiles use.

Remembrance Day Reflections

 

For Remembrance Day, a friend of mine, who declares herself a pacifist, posted a photo of her father, who fought with distinction in WWII and returned with severe PTSD.

The post garnered a couple of comments worth comment:

“Unfortunately War is a direct result of Greed, without Greed there would be no Wars !”

“Yes, but maybe not just greed - maybe also simply a lust for power too, and a belief that your beliefs/God/way of living is THE right way and all other ways are evil and must be stomped out.”

Sounds good; not so. Here is an example of the need to educate one’s conscience.

War is caused by greed? War is expensive. Most times nations lose money by going to war. No doubt war is good for the armaments industry, the “military-industrial complex”; but not for most businesses For most businesses, it will mean a shortage of labour and labour becoming more expensive as workers are drafted. It will mean being cut off from suppliers and markets; often it will mean a destruction of physical plant. More generally, businesses thrive on predictability, reliable profitability, and suffer from any instability. War is the ultimate disruptor of business.

“War is caused by greed” is Marxist delusion. The subtext there is, get rid of capitalism, and you get rid of wars. Seductive to anyone who does not consider themselves a rich capitalist: provides a convenient scapegoat. Better yet if the capitalists are Jews.

“A belief that your beliefs/God/way of living is THE right way and all other ways are evil and must be stomped out.”

Live and let live, right?

On that basis, should the northern states in the US have left the South to their preferred way of life? Of course, it involved the enslavement of others. Whose business was that? If Hitler had not attacked Poland, should the world have looked on in silence as he exterminated all of Germany’s Jews? When he did invade Poland, was Chamberlain right, and Churchill the guilty party, for not letting Hitler well enough alone, and instead starting a World War?

This pacifism is the same idea as that there would be general peace in society if we just abolished all laws and defunded the police. Why mess with Ted Bundy’s or Charles Manson’s recreational opportunities?

This is the atheist argument: get rid of religion, and there will be no more wars. This is seductive, because religion tells you there are things you want to do that you should not do. So there is always a lobby for getting rid of religion.

But one of the things—the main thing—that religion tells you not to do is to harm your neighbour. 

Wars are caused by the same thing that causes all interpersonal conflicts: someone has violated the categorical imperative, to treat others as you would be treated. Wars are caused by selfishness, usually on one side and not the other.

And pacifism is immoral; in a way, the worst immorality. None so guilty as the innocent bystander.

Onward Christian Soldiers

 

Jesus engages in fisticuffs in the temple.

Another argument against religion: “Pie in the sky when you die.” It serves to reconcile people to a lot in life that they should be striving to change. It serves to perpetuate social and personal wrongs.

Christianity certainly can be and has been used to do this. The concept “gentle Jesus meek and mild” and the demand for forgiveness can be manipulated in this way.

But this is a manipulation, a falsification of Christian doctrine. Christianity cannot be blamed for it. 

There is no gentle Jesus in the gospels. He condemns the powers that be, the scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees, in uncompromising terms. He tells his followers to arm themselves. He overturns the tables of the moneychangers. 

“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12: 49-54)

He merely advises against fighting lost causes. That is what “turn the other cheek” is about.

He preaches forgiveness if and only if the offender has repented and tried to make amends. Otherwise, self-evidently, one is endorsing sin. “Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus teach that forgiveness should be offered unconditionally.” “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.” (Luke 17:3)

Christianity is often blamed for “the divine right of kings.” This forms no part of Christian doctrine, and was proposed by secular rulers. Pagan religions usually see the king as a god, who rules by divine right. Christianity rejects this. In the Old Testament, kings are commonly called to account by the prophets. In the new, civil government is said to be in the gift of Satan. “It has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.”

As a practical matter, no other religion or ideology has done a better job of righting the wrongs of the world. Christianity produced liberal democracy and the doctrine of human rights. The doctrine can be traced back through the Jesuits to Aquinas; Locke explicitly based it on the Bible. Wilberforce successfully appealed to Christianity to end slavery. MLK successfully appealed to Christianity to end discrimination against US blacks. Desmond Tutu appealed to Christianity to end apartheid in South Africa. John Paul II appealed to Christianity to end Communism in Poland.

Christianity gives guidance on when to fight, and when to hold back, “A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” With the assurance of ultimate justice, something that gives heart and strength to those who know they are fighting for what is right.

Peace on Earth

 

There is a Christmas carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” its refrain from Luke 2, the announcement of the angels at Christ’s birth as per the King James Bible: “Peace on Earth, good will to men.” And the singer goes no to lament that there is, in fact, no peace on Earth.

And in despair I bowed my head

"There is no peace on Earth," I said

For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on Earth, good will to men

So shame on us, right?

But then again, isn’t that also shame on God? Were the angels lying, then, when they promised that the birth of Christ would bring peace? Apparently: for it is not just the millennia of wars since; even immediately after Jesus’s birth, came the slaughter of the innocents. The life of a sincere Christian is hardly without conflict. Just the reverse: much of the world is set on crucifixion.

But by this interpretation, the Bible contradicts itself. In the gospel, Jesus says, “I bring not peace, but the sword.” St. Paul tells us to fasten on our buckler and gird up our loins to “fight the good fight.” The Apocalypse imagines salvation history as a war of good and evil.

The problem seems to be in a mistranslation of the original Greek. While the King James Version has it as “peace on Earth, good will to men,” the New International Version has “peace to those on whom his favour rests.” The American Standard Version has “peace among men in whom he is well pleased.” The Revised Standard Version has “peace among those whom he favors!” Douay-Rheims has “peace to men of good will.”

It looks as though King James’s translators were cooking the book. Many people no doubt want the message of the Bible to be universal peace and reconciliation. This is especially useful for those in power. It retains them in power. But this is not the Christian message.

The “peace” of which the angels sing is not the absence of external strife, but the absence of internal strife. It is peace of mind. It is the assurance that God is here, and has not forgotten us, and all will turn out well for the good in the end.

It is not at all an assurance of peace for the unrighteous in power, as Herod immediately recognizes.

It is urgent for the sincere Christian to read the Bible and the Catechism closely. The Devil himself can quote scripture for his purposes. 

War

 

Dennis Copeland's monument to the War of 1812.

I have recently once again encountered the inedible horse chestnut that “war never solved anything.” I have seen it attributed to Oriana Fallaci. The argument is that the underlying problems will remain and resurface, no matter the outcome.

It sounds good, and virtuous, and consoling, but it is wrong. It is equivalent to saying that policing, or self-defense, never solved anything. That could be true if there were no evil in the world. In most wars, there is a right and a wrong, and if the right does not war, the wrong triumphs.

The Second World War prevented Nazism from taking over Europe, then the world, and killing all the Jews. It may not have wiped out the ideas underlying fascism and Nazism—they seem to stay with us, now masquerading as “postmodernism,” “progressivism” and “antifascism.” But note that they have to masquerade. It certainly wiped out the credibility of fascism or Nazism openly so-called.

The US Civil War ended slavery in the US, and ended the option of states seceding from the union.

The US War of Independence achieved US independence; and perhaps brought the ideals of liberal democracy, of human equality and of fully democratic representative government, to the world stage.

Some wars, it is true, end ambiguously. Perhaps there is an argument here that the war accomplished nothing. Conversely, you might instead argue that the peace accomplished nothing; that it might have been better to keep on fighting to some definite conclusion. The First World War comes to mind.

The First World War is indeed often cited as a pointless war. It seems pointless to us because the casus belli seems unclear, so little ground was physically fought over, and another big war with the same combatants started only a couple of decades later. But it is wrong to say it had no significant results. It ended the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire. It established American world dominance. It triggered the Russian Revolution. It ended the era of European dominance, European empires, European cultural confidence, and the days of monarchies. It established the nation-state as the international norm. It changed the world utterly.

And there is probably a good argument that, had the Armistice actually been refused, and the Entente continued to occupy Germany, no second war need have been fought. The “stab in the back” legend could not have arisen.

 Americans might be seduced into the notion that war is pointless by their experience since the Second World War. Since then, largely because of the nuclear option, they have been unable to fight any wars to a definite victory. The Korean War, for example, ended about where it started. 

On the other hand, it is clearly wrong to say that the UN and South Korea accomplished nothing by fighting that war. Just compare conditions in North Korea to conditions in South Korea today.

Vietnam seems to have been pointless. It gained nothing for the Americans or the South Vietnamese. For the North Vietnamese, it was about independence, but it seems dubious that America or France would still be there had the war not been fought. The economic and political doctrines that came with it probably held Vietnamese development back for a generation or two.

The wars in Iraq may seem pointless to Americans, but only because ultimate victory was thrown away. It recovered the independence of Kuwait and took out the most open aggressor since Hitler, preserving international law and almost certainly preventing future wars.

Afghanistan seems to have been pointless for the Americans, since they leave with the status quo ante. Not for the Taliban, who were fighting to preserve their religious culture against foreign influences. Time will tell whether they succeed.

War is intrinsically awful and a malum in se; that is a separate argument, or rather, probably not even arguable. It is possible for a war to be pointless, but this is the exception, not the rule. More often, to refuse to fight when wrong meets right is simple moral cowardice.

All We Are Saying ....

The Fall of the Rebel Angels: Peter Bruegel the Elder.

Hitler wants peace. His speeches and his interviews on this theme are constructed on an ancient formula: war is incapable of solving a single question, war threatens the extermination of the superior races, war brings the ruin of civilization in its wake. -- Leon Trotsky, 1933.

Xerxes, my regular correspondent, tells of a friend who has lost his faith in God because, “His community were pacifists. They didn’t believe that wars settled anything. But wars kept happening.”

Why did he think God was obliged to conform to his wishes? Did someone tell him God was a pacifist? The Lord God of Hosts?

There is perhaps no ideology more evil than pacifism. An evil man who aggressively does evil, and admits it, is at least brave; bravery is a virtue. Far worse is the person who does evil while pretending it is good. He or she attempts to subvert others to evil, and will condemn and discourage the good.

This describes pacifism.

To be a pacifist in the face of evil is, in legal terms, to aid and abet. The pacifist is as guilty as the perpetrator; he or she is just refusing to take responsibility for it.

Wars never settled anything? To say so is to endorse slavery in the US; it took a war to end it. It is to endorse Hitler’s extermination of the Jews; it took a war to end it. It took a war to achieve American or Irish independence.

Being a pacifist will prevent wars? That is like saying, if only there were more sheep, there would be fewer wolves.

It should go without saying that nobody wants war. Nobody wants to get shot at. Hitler did not want war, and was a vocal pacifist. He would have vastly preferred being able to annex neighbouring lands peacefully, as he had the Saarland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. He could have kept doing so happily forever.

Conversely, if there had been fewer pacifists in other lands, he might have been stopped with much less bloodshed, perhaps with none, when he invaded the Saarland, or Austria.

Pacifism kills. It kills with a knife in the back, and with a fatuous smile on its face.

The Immorality of Pacifism

Kitty Genovese.

It is more or less reflexive to most of us to refer to conflicts as “misunderstandings,” and to assume or insist that there must be blame on both sides. After all, in the real world, there are no good guys and bad guys.

“Teach men not to rape,” is one common example of this cockeyed logic. The same logic makes pacifists think of themselves as morally superior.

There is indeed a risk in dehumanizing one’s opponent. That is a different issue, arising in a different situation. What if you are a third party, seeing two others involved in some conflict?

Our true moral responsibility is not to chide them both, but to side with the right. Consider the classic, extreme, example of Kitty Genovese, being raped and stabbed in an apartment stairwell. Did or did not her neighbours have a moral duty to call the police, or even step outside their doors to try to stop it?

Should they have instead scolded Genovese for failing to get along with the rapist?

If there is a serious conflict, it is naturally unlikely to be caused by a misunderstanding. People would have to be remarkably stupid to come to blows or worse over a mere misunderstanding; and if they did, the matter would necessarily be easily set to rights.

It is, on the other hand, necessarily likely that a conflict would arise because one party wants to take the rights of another, and believes they are powerful enough that they can. That is, someone is doing evil.

This, therefore, must be assumed to be the case whenever a conflict is encountered.

We do not always do so, because we are morally weak. It is always safer and easier to stay out of it. One could, after all, get hurt; one could end up another victim. But when we claim moral superiority for our pacifism, for our neutrality, we have drifted into settled vice.

History is immensely valuable, because it gives us objective and well-documented examples of social and of moral dilemmas. This is why history was always studied. When we look at history, do we find many conflicts in which both sides were on equally solid moral grounds, and it was all just a misunderstanding?

Surely everyone accepts that the Second World War was a case of good against evil. Surely everyone, too, given the current demands to pull down statues, understands that slavery was a pure moral evil, and it would have been immoral for the Union government to allow it to persist.

Similarly, the Cold War, with all its minor ancillaries, was in the end best summed up as Reagan boldly did, to much criticism at the time, as a struggle with an “evil empire.” Now that the conflict is over, we can surely see that clearly.

I dare to say that almost all past conflicts can, when clearly seen, be seen as a conflict between good and evil. Back to the Punic Wars, between a Roman republic and a Carthaginian mercantile empire that practiced child sacrifice. Or the Peloponnesian War, between the Athenian democracy and a Sparta that was, in effect, a proto-Fascist state.

Right now, I think we see a struggle of good against evil in the streets of America, and in the growing aggression of the Chinese Communist Party.

It is the eternal battle, and it is real.

The Fire This Time

St. Dymphna

Luke’s gospel is uncompromising. This Sunday’s reading:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

So much for “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” As Andrew Klavan has observed, he is nowhere in the gospels.

I have heard this passage described repeatedly as “challenging.” Followed by a sermon that did not challenge, but avoided mentioning what the passage actually says: Jesus is against peace and family values.

We should not be surprised. Either is an idolatry, the more dangerous for being so apparently desirable, and so seductive. This is what evil always is: God created all things good. Evil consists of valuing a lesser good over a greater.

Sex is good; and so the temptation is to elevate sex beyond its procreative station. Material comfort is good. And so the love of money becomes the root of evil. In the same way, family and peace are desirable, and so especially likely to lead to sin. 

Peace in our time.

Neville Chamberlain serenely betrayed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the name of peace. Lincoln could have had peace and avoided the carnage of the Civil War by guaranteeing the right to slavery. The neighbours of Kitty Genovese opted for peace. As Edmund Burke put it, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

And “family” is at least as often as not in rivalry with spiritual values. Family values are pagan values: valuing family relationships beyond the point required by gratitude implies devaluing all those to whom you are not related. It is at base no more admirable than racism.

St. Dymphna’s father demanded that she marry him. That would be the ultimate expression of family values.

On Solving the World's Problems

St. Michael the Archangel

Everyone ought to have a leftist friend—or, if you are yourself of the left, a rightist friend. Without one, how do you know what the other side really thinks? And, if you do not know what they think, how do you know whether you really disagree?

The trick is staying friendly. Sadly, most people these days don’t talk with those on the other side of the culture wars; that is what happens when it becomes a kind of war. I think abortion made it a war; it is now hard to be a leftist without being consciously immoral. And it is hard to be sanguine about the difference between right and wrong.

I am lucky enough, though, to have more than one friend who is on the left and who is still speaking to me. One of them recently presented me with what seems a, maybe the, fundamental argument for leftism generally.

Here it is, in point form:

1. We imagine heaven as a place without wars, without armies or weapons, of perfect equality, where nobody dominates anyone else.
2. If we can imagine this in heaven, we can imagine it on earth.
3. If it is imaginable, it is possible.
4. Therefore, we ought to work to make earth like this.

Sounds good, on the face of it. And this seems to me to raise some important and interesting points.

First, can we really imagine heaven as a place without wars?

St. James

I think not.

Those who have read the Bible will be aware that it indeed speaks of a “war in heaven.” St. Michael and all that. Revelation 12: 7-9, inter alia.

This is usually thought of as happening in the primordial past; but in fact, in Revelations, it is also reported as a future event, part of the end times. Jesus also speaks, cryptically, of “the violent taking heaven by storm” (Matthew 11:2) at the time of the New Testament.

And, at the end of the Book of Revelations, when the New Jerusalem, the ultimate image of the perfection of the created world, descends from the sky… it has walls. “It had a great, high wall with twelve gates” (Revelations 21:12). There is no point to a walled city if there is no threat of war.

St. John sees the New Jerusalem descend from heaven.

So the matter is clear. Not only has there been war in heaven, but war is an eternal feature of heaven. There was war in heaven before Adam and Eve, and there will be war in heaven at the end of time.

And there are armies in heaven. God is “Lord of Hosts,” “The Lord who commands armies” (Isaiah 6:5).

Is there free will in heaven? Of course; there has to be; it would not be heaven if we lost our free will in getting there. But so long as there is free will, there is the chance of choosing evil. Ask, not only Lucifer, but Adam and Eve, who chose evil in the very face of the beatific vision. Therefore, there can be and has been moral conflict in heaven. And, if there has ever been war in heaven, there is always war in heaven. That is the nature of things eternal.

Does the presence there of war make heaven less than heaven? No, just the reverse. Ask any decent storyteller. A story without conflict is dead. Would a heaven that is deadly boring be heaven? No.

Ergo, heaven without war is inconceivable. The difference with earth, I suspect, is that in heaven, as in a work of fiction, the participant, the reader or the fictional character, never really gets hurt.

Is war in itself evil? Certainly not, if it is a clear contest between good and evil. It is not evil to fight evil, for that would be a contradiction in terms. While we have a moral obligation to avoid unjust war, it is too often forgotten that we have, equally, a moral obligation to engage in just war. It is pacifism, not war, that is objectively immoral.

Consider this too: how could a truly moral person be content sitting in heaven strumming a harp with the awareness that evil and suffering persisted in the created world below? Therefore, so long as there is ill-being on earth, there must also be conflict in heaven. Happiness would require continuing to fight in that war. Hence, of course, the Catholic doctrine of saints. And at the end of time? That is eternity, and eternity is not an absence nor an infinite extension of time; it is a point from which all times are equidistant. The war is still present.

So premise 1 in my friend’s argument is false.

But let’s not pass on without dealing as well with equality, since that is yet closer to the modern left’s bosom.

Here too, it is quite clear from the Bible that there is no equality in heaven. There is an elaborate hierarchy. There are ranks of angels, and levels of saints, with thrones, principalities, powers, some elders seated closer to the throne of God than others (Revelations 4:4), and so forth. When James and John ask for seats at Jesus’s left and right, he does not demand equality; he says that it is not for him to choose.

Really, equality in heaven is a strange idea. There is no equality with God, of course. Moreover, why would someone who was “no better than he should be” be equal in heaven to a Mother Teresa, an Oskar Schindler, or a John the Baptist, who demonstrate “heroic virtue”?

This is objectively unjust.

The idea that there should be equality in heaven, I gather, comes from a misunderstanding on the left of what political equality on earth means or ought to mean--a concept that itself comes from Christianity. It means everyone should get the same chances; not that everyone should get the same results. We understand and accept that when we put murderers in prison. Meritocracy is not opposed to true equality, but is its result. The absence of meritocracy is automatically inequality.

If heaven, or indeed social justice, is our aim, then, the left has it wrong. We should not be seeking a situation in which everyone gets the same salary, for example, but one in which everyone is rewarded according to their efforts. Just as in heaven. The whole concept of heaven and hell is of ultimate just rewards, not everyone ending up with the same result.

On to point 2 and 3: that what we can imagine in heaven, we can imagine on earth; and what is imaginable is possible. This is true in a sense, but trivial. The limits of what we can imagine are the limits of what we can imagine. And we cannot imagine anything that is logically or mathematically impossible. But we can imagine things that are impossible in practical terms, like flying pigs or the moon being made from green cheese.

Just so, anything we can imagine happening in a dream, we necessarily can imagine happening in waking life. But if I dream that I can fly, it is not necessarily a good idea to jump off a tall building the next morning.

In fact, recognizing this distinction is more or less definitive of sanity.

Practical circumstances in heaven and on earth might be somewhat different.

But let’s even allow points 1, 2, and 3. I think there is still a problem with point 4: that we ought to work to make earth more like heaven.

Actually, why? Couldn’t God manage it on his own? Isn’t he omnipotent and all? So why isn’t it perfect already?

In other words, it follows from God’s omnipotence that the world is as it is largely because it ought to be or must be so.

So should we change it? Are we sure?

It takes long and sober thought to understand what our proper role and purpose is here. To seek to remold the world to fulfill our desires is not obviously it; it might instead be an act of disobedience, of arrogance, and of selfishness. One thinks, first off, of the Tower of Babel. The builders sought to make something “whose top may reach unto heaven.” Bad idea. As bad as Eve’s similar plan “to be as God.”

Why are we here, then? Genesis suggests an answer: Genesis 2: 15. We were created to tend a garden. It is not our garden; we are just the gardeners.

And, at least at the creation, there was no need to work the garden for material sustenance; that came after the fall (Genesis 3:17-18). Though we have to do that now as well, that was not the purpose. It is not that kind of garden.

Now, if a gardener is not gardening for food, what is his purpose? What other kind of garden is there?

He is gardening for beauty. That is our mission: to change and adapt the natural world as and when this produces greater beauty. Pruning here, weeding there.

But not just beauty in the strictest sense. It is important to add, with Keats, that truth and moral good are both forms of beauty—the selfless good deed, the mathematical equation that elegantly solves the problem.

This may, but does not obviously or automatically, involve political action.