Pacifism's Utopian Heart

Campus Report ^ | April 4, 2008 | Bethany Stotts

[bs9021]

Pacifism’s Utopian Heart

by: Bethany Stotts, April 04, 2008

... "At its heart, utopianism is the denial of radical evil. It is a naive vision of social and political life that ignores the realities of history and human nature,” writes Professor Joseph Loconte for JJI. The Pepperdine University Visiting Professor expressed his concern that “despite some good intentions, the utopians have absorbed a number of sub-Christian views about human nature and [the] mission of the Church in a fallen world.”

Such attitudes lead to moral relativism, he argues, prompting strong anti-Americanism from figures such as Jim Wallis, Arthur Schlessinger, Jr., and Stanley Hauerwass (Duke University). “These thinkers join a chorus of voices who compare the United States to imperial Rome and Nazi Germany. This is how utopians talk—outraged utopians, that is,” he writes....

(snip) ....Pacifism, argues Loconte, ignores Islamic fascism’s threat to civilization and human rights in favor of a “theology of love.” “In other words, it is a theology of love divorced from the Biblical demands of justice—which means it is not a theology of love at all, but a posture of pious indifference toward suffering and evil,” he writes. He later continues, “By denying these facts, by rejecting the reality of radical evil, by confusing the roles of church and state, the utopians are succumbing to an old temptation: They’ve allowed their hatred of war to blot out all other virtues.” ...

[secretagent]

OK. Pragmatic non-violence - a situational tool.

As opposed, for historical example, to Gandhi’s advising the Jews to bare their throats to the Nazis.

[Blind Eye Jones]

I guess you are arguing that mother of necessity doesn't always drive invention. Freud, in as much as he tries reduce everything to sex, might argue that sublimation and the id gives rise to everything, from science to cannibalism... Ted Turner is an idiot.