I was involved peripherally in a discussion with a wacky fundy on his blog once.  He insisted that pacificsts were immoral, because they would stand idly by and allow someone to rape and murder their children.

Either that, or they would commit violence in order to protect their family, so they weren't really pacifists.  Indeed, he went on to argue that pacifism was immoral.

This is so typical of that mindset; create a strawman to attack by only accepting polarizing assumptions.  Oddly enough, this guy was really hot on accusing other people of creating strawmen...but usually what he called "strawmen" were actual arguments.

But back to pacifism.  A friend just lent me season two of Kung Fu, and I was watching an episode that reminded me of this argument, and encapsulated my argument perfectly.

There was a Hutterite community being menaced and attacked by cattelmen (typical western motif) and the leader of the Hutterites was going to move his community; despite the fact that a large amount of their sheep were ill and would not survive the journey.

When Cain suggested that they stand their ground, the Hutterite leader said that if he is attacked by a man with a stick he had three options:

1) Let the man beat him and do nothing.

2) Beat the man rather than being beaten.

3) Go somehwere else.

Cain pointed out that there was another option:

4) Take the stick away from the man.

What was critical to the Christian's argument in my story was that he take away option #4.  That was the only way for him to complete his argument that pacifism is immoral.  In order to make pacifists craven, cowardly and immoral and the brave Christian "soldiers" preaching millitarism moral...he had to do away with #4.

Here's a real-world example.

In peaceful protests in recent years, protestors have discovered people in their midst that they have reason to believe are police officers acting as agents provocatuer.  They are usually dressed as "black block" anarchists...probably because that explains why their faces are covered (difficult to prove that they are cops if their faces are covered).  You can dismiss the fact that sometimes they are wearing boots identical to the riot police, or whatever evidence the protesters have.

It doesn't matter if the provocatuers are policemen in fact or not.  There is no need to prove it to court-level standards.  The protestors are developing a method of dealing with it that I think will eventually become quite effective.

Whenever someone notices another protestor about to start violence, or pushing for violence, they raise the alarm.  The protesors surrounding the provocatuers withdraw to create a ring  of space around the provocatuers, isolating them and making it easier for cameras to catch all of the action around them.

They then take up some sort of chant expressing their belief that the people in question are police, and that they reject the violence being encouraged by the provocatuers.

Eventually, the provocatuers are forced to leave.

The weapons of the provocatuers are:

1) Anonymity

2) Confusion

3) Public perception that they are part of the protest and their actions are tacitly approved by the other protesters.

Effectively executed, this tactic should eliminate the stories that involve the press saying "and then someone threw a bottle".  With the provocatuer isolated and easily identified, there will be no excuse for collective punishment.  So far, the weakness of this is that in order for it to work, it is necessary for the activist organizers to keep everyone together.  Where it failed in St. Paul was that the provocatuers broke off from the main protest, and this tactic does nothing if they are somewhere they cant be contained.  When you hear the organizers yelling "walk don't run"...that is probably so that people are not accidentally injured in mob panic.  However, it would also help to keep the groups together, where they can police their own membership.

The weapons of violence can be taken away by identification, organization, and isolation of those trying to use the cover of the community to violate the values of the community.  And no one gets hurt.

As one protester put it "nonviolent direct action".

So the Christianist millitants can mock pacifism all they want, and try to make it seem like pacifists are a bunch of immoral pansies...and they can even use that idea to convince themselves that their millitarism for their faith is moral and rightous.

That's fine with me because any pacifist knows...self-deception is always the first step toward self-defeat.

If you are interested, here are some examples of this priciple in action:

In this video, the tactic I describe comes into play about minute seven:

Here you can see how it worked in Canada with a bunch of Canadian protesters.

You can see that the protestors put themselves between the uniformed officers and the undercover officers with rocks (the police department was later forced to admit that the three people in question were undercover officers, but insist that their assignment was not to start trouble...however, they were identified as cops due to their provocative behavior, and their police-issued boots. They identified them, isolated them, prevented them from provoking violence. The video shows the provocatuers being cuffed, but the police department was forced to admit that they were officers when investigation showed no record of the arrests.

And as I alluded to before, this tactic works against all provocatuers, those who are police and those who are not.

Pacifism is the committment to find the non-violent solution.  It is a lie to say that that way has to be self-destructicve or ineffectual.