did you tell the history profs and the mennonites you were there to convert them to the struggle?
kelley
At 09:03 PM 11/28/01 -0600, Carrol Cox wrote:
>One other objection to the term "selective pacifism" is that it goofs up
>the meaning of the word "pacifism" as used by 'real' and consistent
>self-labelled Pacifists. Members of the Mennonite Church, for example.
>And in anti-war coalitions it is really quite important to keep these
>terms reasonably straight so that members of those coalitions can talk
>to each other with some minimal clarity. Miscommunication could have
>seriously disruptive consequences. I can work (have worked, am working)
>with pacifists. They can work (have worked, are working) with me. But I
>can't see any thing but utter chaos if one begin to throw around such
>terms as "selective pacifism" (it's really bad writing; it's a confused
>and confusing oxymoron -- a figure that can work powerfully when
>conscious and under control but gives at least the appearance of
>cretinism when sloppy).
>
>Here is a case where an exception does test the rule. At an early
>meeting of the coalition here I rose to note that it did not consist
>wholly of adherents of "non-violence"; that I for example approved of
>the Vietnamese use of violence to oppose the u.s. invasion and the U.S.
>use of violence to suppress the insurrection of the slavedrivers. Later
>on a woman from the ISU history department (speciality: Civil War
>history) remarked to me in private conversation that she _was_ a
>pacifist, but that she could not quite avoid feeling that Lincoln had
>been right to call out the army. I think the rule survives the test: she
>was quite clear in noting that her particular judgment clashed with her
>general principle, and she was quite clear what the general principle
>was. Accurate language -i.e., the possibility of communication -- is
>maintained while ordinary human complexity and sloppiness is honored.
>
>But Max is trying by sheer violence (and I think considerable historical
>distortion) to apply the generic term "pacifist" (specifically qualified
>with "selective") to persons who never were nor never called themselves
>pacifists of any kind. They were/are just persons that independently of
>any general principles about war or violence correctly thought this that
>and the other war (e.g. the u.s. invasion of vietnam, the u.s. invasion
>of the Dominican Republic; the u.s. assault on Afghanistan) were
>criminal operations. If they can be called (selective) "pacifists," than
>every single blooming homo sapiens ever born was a pacifist, and the
>word loses all meaning.
>
>I come back to my initial judgment: the phrase "selective pacifist" is
>is seriously bad writing -- and one can't take seriously any discourse
>which seriously uses the term. (How's that for using a word three times
>in one sentence with a different sense every time.)
>
>Carrol