A brief followup on liberalism and pacifism
by David Atkins
One of the more pointed critiques of my post on liberalism and interventionism from a couple of days ago is that it ignores the pacifist tradition in liberal thought.
This critique is well-taken. So I'd like to address it here briefly before returning to our regularly scheduled programming, as it were.
It is certainly true that there is a proud tradition of pacifism on the left that would seem to be at odds with what I have broadly and perhaps crudely termed "interventionism," but I would argue that the conflict is not so great as one might imagine.
There are two distinct arguments on behalf of pacifism: 1) that the use of force is morally wrong at all times; and 2) that the use of force as a solution to problems is often counterproductive, and/or worse than the original problem.
The latter argument has been at times the province of liberals and isolationist conservatives alike. This view was best summed up by Thomas Jefferson when he said: “War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.” Of course, Thomas Jefferson also supported the colonists' use of martial force against Britain to establish America's independence, so one might argue that Jefferson was being selective in his judgment here.
But the argument that war is so atrocious, so ugly, so awful and wasteful that it is only necessary under the very most extreme set of circumstances is a powerful one, and one that as a liberal I wholly agree with. Interventionism does no good if the intervention causes more harm than it removes. When it comes to the use of force, the burden of proof is on the interventionist to show that the good that might be done would outweigh the harm--and from there it is a moral judgment whether the loss of even one life is worth whatever goal is being sought. How one feels about these things can differ depending on how greatly one's morality is shaped by Kantian moral imperatives and circumstantial utilitarian rationales.
Most modern liberals, myself included, tend to believe that military force should be used exceedingly sparingly due to its negative consequences. On the other hand, it's awfully hard to look at a situation like the Rwandan genocide and argue that the world should have done nothing to intervene and stop it, given the obvious reality that there was no version of diplomacy adequate to the task. These are value judgments that are circumstantial in nature, and reasonable people will differ on a case by case basis.
But the first argument, that the use of force is always wrong, is more problematic. It assumes that the conflict that arises from the oppression of one person by another can always be resolved through non-violent, non-forceful channels. That assumption in turn is based on the notion that people are fundamentally good toward each other, and for one reason or another learn to be bad toward each other, and that violence is caused by some sort of economic imbalance or slighted honor that can always be rectified through adequate diplomacy.
This is where certain strains of liberalism and libertarianism intersect, but are usually sidelined by more mainstream versions of liberalism and conservatism alike, which both assume that people are mostly selfish, and that intervention is required to maintain the social order. Conservatives and liberals disagree on the form of intervention: conservatives believe that wealth, patriarchy and privilege must be defended by force from the lazy, undeserving, lesser rabble who would try to take it illegitimately, while liberals believe that the historically weak and oppressed must be defended by force from the greedy, rapacious tyrants who would wring every last shred of dignity from them.
How one feels about Ron Paul--whether one is on the Right or the Left--may depend greatly on how one feels about fundamental human nature and the origins of evil and oppression. Those on the left who see oppression as a more or less learned Western capitalist construct will be likelier to support more libertarian notions; those who view oppression as an evil endemic to the human condition (and thus requiring levels of intervention) will be less likely to do so. But I think both kinds of people can come to pacifism from different directions.
And now, back to the issues of the day...
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