A pacifist is someone who opposes all wars for any reason whatsoever. I am proposing that the pacifist think about what he is advocating. If World Peace could be achieved with only a few wars against monomaniacs and the prospect would be a time when there were no more such inasmuch as all nations had become Liberal Democracies in which peaceful outlets for a prospective megalomaniac's megalothymos (think Bill Gates) was available then the total number of casualties in plan B (Fukuyama/Barnett) would be fewer than with plan A (utter pacifism) which just gets in the way of dealing with said megalomaniacs, encourages them for the wrong reason and increases casualties. Furthermore in that pacifistic strategies encourage megalomaniacs, the day of the end of history may be pushed back increasing the numbers of casualties. If someone says, like I took Phil Enns to be saying, [he never said this in so many words, but this is what I took him to be saying -- sort of] "I don't care how many casualties are incurred by opposing all wars. I do it out of principle and don't care about the total number of casualties in my Plan A vs the possible number of casualties in plan B. A war is a war and I shall oppose them all". If someone takes that position then fine, but if someone is interested in reducing the total number of casualties by whatever means then they ought to examine the Fukuyama/Barnett process. Lawrence -----Original Message----- From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Judith Evans Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 11:54 AM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: On the prospect of World Peace But you are unable to define "pacifist". Your implicit definition is, I suggest, "someone who opposes some of the wars you support". Judy Evans, Cardiff --- Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > No, no, no. That's not true. I wrote "on the > prospect of world peace" as a > challenge to the pacifists. Judy Evans, Cardiff ___________________________________________________________ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" - The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html