Peace and Violence

By John Verion

A woman I communicate with said, "Violence doesn't solve anything." I wrote the following response to her...

Those are words that can only be spoken by a person whose liberty and safety are first purchased and then routinely maintained by others who use violence.

Violence is a blunt instrument to be sure, but to claim it doesn't solve *anything* is to be blithely ignorant of the way the world works and has worked for millenia. Violence should be the last, best option in any conflict, but often times any other option is a luxury that we can ill afford.

Every day men use violence to stop hideous and atrocious things that occur all around us. You find it distasteful and that is fine, but it must be done or else the human creature in whom you have so much confidence would be your captor, murderer, slaver, rapist, or thief.

The fact is that those who are not afraid of violence protect the innocent. Like it or not, this world is populated by a significant minority of people who would just as soon kill you and/or take what you own as say "Hello" and "How do you do."

Non-violence is a fine technique, but it only works against an aggressor who can be shamed by the immorality of his act. Non-violence works for men like Ghandi when he faces down the British Empire. It works for men like MLK Jr when he is set on by dogs and bigots. But, please remember that it works because the foes they face are ostensibly men of conscience who have an internal mechanism to which an appeal can be made.

Non-violence did not work for Rome against the Huns. It did not work for native peoples against Europeans. It did not work for Africans against Arab slavers. It did not work for the Jews against the Germans or for the Chinese against the Japanese. It didn't work for a few million Russians against Stalin. And I do not think it would work against Saddam Hussein. I say that with confidence because he lists two of those groups as the kinds of people he would most like to emulate.

Peace is a virtue, but peace at all costs is nothing more than a vice that elevates itself above the good and the weal of mankind.

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