Pacifism and moral sickness

(Hat tip: John Ray.)

Dr. Sanity looks at the pathology of pacifists. Among other things, he notes:

If the peace movement really were a peace movement, its members would be denouncing the true threats to peace and trying their damndest to disarm and neutralize the likes of Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah etc. etc.

Instead, like the parents who are so desperate to squelch their own aggressive impulses they unconsciously enable and facilitate their children's violent behavior; these "pacifists" actually champion the terrorists; rationalizing terrorist behavior; refusing to call them to account for their uncivilized and barbaric actions;, demanding cease-fires with them (never acknowledging that there is no way to hold them to account when they break the ceasefire, as they inevitably do); and have little or nothing to say about the standard terrorist operational policies that deliberately target the innocent.

....

War is a always a terrible choice. No reasonable person could believe that it is benign or intrinsically "good" to wage war. Yet, it is sometimes a choice that reasonable people need to make simply because evil exists in the world and it cannot go unchecked--that is, not if you truly care about innocent human life.

....

Pacifists cannot deal with this simple truth. In reality, they don't care much about human suffering, misery or even death; let alone the legacy of evil in the world. Through a variety of psychological defenses, they have managed to deny, displace, distort, and project real evil away. There cannot be found even a trace of psychological insight among all those angry marchers who violently and adamantly demand peace at any price.

For the carefree members of the antiwar movement, the triumph of evil is unimportant when compared to their own narcissistic need to appear virtuous and good. Like the parents ShrinkWrapped writes about, they will always find a way to externalize the blame for the consequences of their own self-delusion. Like Petunia, they will emphasize rhetoric over action; good intentions over actual behavior.

And indeed, part of the defense mechanism at work here the tendency to deal in absolutes. War is never the answer. Violence is always wrong. Torture never works, and so on.

The function of such extreme rhetoric is to delegitimize any opposition. If the extremist claims are accepted, it means there can be no principled opposition to the speaker's point of view. "War is not the answer" is interpreted as meaning "war is never the answer". Indeed, its true interpretation is "war is never the answer, and only vicious, immoral people advocate it.

Thus, debate is shut down before the extremist risks exposure to any facts that might get in.