"if someone had been able to take Hitler aside BEFORE all the horrors of WW2 and been able to convince him to lay off the genocide"

This is the pacifists dilemma though. There were numerous attempts to sway hitler from his course. Neville Chamberlain famously celebrating the Munich Agreement. At the end of the day, you can't peacefully stop someone if they are intent on causing violence.

I don't think you can really go down this road, either. It's a fun thought experiment, but it requires knowledge you only have once it's too late. You can't talk to the one kid who will grow up to be adolf hitler. There's very likely one out there now that we can't stop because we don't know them.

"At that point, violence is your only recourse to stop the atrocities."

The pacifist's dilemma and this combined, to me, put this in a morally ambiguous place. If you accept that you can't stop someone bent on violence, and nazis arrive announcing that they are, then is it better for a little violence, visited upon those who pursue violent ends? Or is it better that we wait and see the violence occur before we react to it?

On further introspection, i think both of our positions exist in a similar ambiguity - you need to know who to speak to before you know who to speak to, and i need to know who to correctively punch before i know who to correctively punch. Yours might be better for short term, worse for long term. Mine might be worse for short term, better for long term.

In truth, i probably lean more towards agreeing with you, but i'm trying to point out that even though we think "be civil" is the best option, it doesn't have any divine right to be the best option. The best option (we would probably agree) is the one that causes the least overall harm, and we don't *know* what that is, and never can. I think it's important we reconsider accepted wisdom like that. (which is really why i decided to argue it..in honesty, i probably feel the same as you; disapprove but not loudly. My main problem with the position i'm taking is - how do you *stop* the nazi punchers once the nazis are suitably punched? And when do i become the nazi?)

@transmorpher
"leaving yourself and your loved ones open to the same treatment next time someone disagrees with one of your views."

I made it very clear in earlier comments that i'm only ok with someone being punched if they are openly calling for genocide and death to people. I'm ok with you ripping that argument apart (because i think it can be.. i'm leaving myself open on purpose), but that isn't what you've done. I don't accept there's an equivalence between my harmless beliefs and a genocidal maniac's.

I've been called an oxy-moron
Because I question which drugs our war's on
Why are there more drug stores than liquor stores
You can score on
The healers have become the harmers
They're just pharmaceutical farmers
What we used to call dealers
We now call doctors
I might be a seedy cynic
Cause that crack house is now a clinic
It's time they change the name of the oath to
The hypocritic or the parasitic

It isn't adder-altruistic
By over prescribing
How can we fight them in a [?]
I'll throw a proz-accusation
With a sub-keta-meaning
They'll say my fears are quaa-ludicrous
They should be ati-vanishing
With every demurr-altercation
They'll have a good xan-explanation
You're just cialis-tated
Cause we made your dick deflated

It's oxy-moronic
It's oxy-moronic

It should be doctors getting busted
For their klon-opinions we trusted
We're not the sinners there the ones
That served us the vico-dinners
I don't want to be an alarmist
But in that harmacy there's a harmacist
And those scrips are making us [?] minded pacifists

It's oxy-moronic
It's oxy-moronic
It's oxy-moronic

Don't think that I am being crazy
The medical industrial complex
Keeps us vi-aggravated and hard to come
Because of perco-sex
How can we hydro-condone
Their blatant misconduct
They don't care for patients
They care about pushing product

Are you oxy-moronic
For wanting your daily chronic
And making your mom's house hydroponic
You're oxy-moronic

I've been called an oxy-moron
For getting my metaphor on
Linoleum is the floor on
I'm an oxy-moron

It's time to be alarmed
We're not being healed
We're being harmed
Our country's being factory farmed
It's Oxy-moronic
It's time to sound to alarm-a
We can't put our faith in karma
We got a common enemy
And they're called Big Pharma

And it's oxy-moronic
And it's oxy-moronic
It's all oxy-moronic
It's all oxy-moronic

Daily chronic, now most of your house is, okay
"Most of your house is" what does that even mean?
He's turned most of his house into hydroponic
Why wouldn't he have turned all of it into hydroponic?
Well cause he lives there
"Now all of your house is hydroponic"
Most is sappy
Really? It's like saying maybe
How about "Now your mom's house is hydroponic"
Yeah! That's fucking way better
God you fucking woke up
Come on Mike, where you been
Where you been all month?

*promote

Ultimate Pacifist!!

The EDL (represented here by the driver) certainly seem to be pretty horrible shits.

However my own liberal live-and-let-live inclinations definitely face a problem when confronted with radical Islam and other toxic memes.

How does such a liberal philosophy deal with an opposing philosophy which will fundamentally not live-and-let-live?

It's the pacifist versus the warrior, and moral victories are a bit useless when they are posthumous.

Of course none of this is helped by the moneyfuckers led by the United States and Great Britain, who are more than happy with this fire while they are selling fuel and firefighting equipment.


Oh look a honking cat! Heeheehee!

no pacifist achievement in this runthrough.

impressive work....too bad I had no idea what they were doing or why.

I'm such a sucker for the music from this game. especially the title menu music.

I've noticed a predictable yet still disheartening trend in the comment threads of many videos covering the Ukraine uprising: anti-Occupy Wall Streeters pointing to the relative pacifist nature of the Occupy movement as proof of that movement's insincerity and ineffectiveness.

What the anti-Occupy folks need to understand is that the only thing separating America from the Ukraine is that a weak ember of faith that the system can still be reformed with non-violent tactics still smolders in the hearts of the have-nots and will-never-haves.

They should be celebrating and thanking their gods for the non-violent nature of Occupy yet they mock and draw erroneous conclusions that have the potential to produce a hell on earth that until today, only happens on their televisions in distant lands.

1) Don't be confused, and think that I've decided the casting of ant colonies for art is justified. I'm pointing out that the issue is more complex than many, including yourself, may realize. I find the video disturbing... and unlike our resident @ant have not voted for it.
2) Please look up Godwin's law. Using Nazi analogies generally undermines your argument.. it just makes it hard for people to accept that you have thought things through.
3) But hey, assuming that you have thought things through, let's continue with your analogy:
Perhaps the holocaust analogy does work, but to be sure the fire ants are not the Gypsies, they are the Germans. Fire ants are rapidly spreading across the world, drastically reducing both the abundance and diversity of native species. This includes native ant species, as well as a huge range of arthropod prey, potentially plants (through seed consumption), and even small vertebrates (e.g. lizards and ground nesting birds).
If you are arguing from a pacifistic stance, that violence against another creature is never justified, even if it is in the defense of others more helpless or in self-defense, I thoroughly respect that position. Although any violence turns my stomach; I cannot say that I agree.. for sure, the next time I get an infection, I will take antibiotics; the next time I see purple loosestrife, I will tear it from its roots.

Fair enough, I'm basically a pacifist and wouldn't hit anyone anyway.
But I don't see this as any different than playing Russian roulette.
A complete disdain for the value of a person's life.

Trippy.

We always want to preserve nature and keep our hands out of it. And to preserve nature and keep our hands out of it, we fly miles every day to shoot down the unworthy.

The hunter in me thinks this would be excellent fodder for a tourist-hunting-trip, though the pacifist in me thinks that's disgusting.

Ugh, so much effin stupidity in this video, especially when that dickweed comes in with his "ooh, 13 y.o.'s are being brain-washed into being gay" crap (as pacifist as I am I wanted to kick him squarely in his bigoted nuts). And comparing Christians being discriminated against to homosexuals being discriminated is pathetic.

As for bk, it's pretty obvious from his comment stream that he believes his crap. Just ignore him.

This means in practice that USA is allowed "legally" to kill this guy, no question asked. It's just atrocity that US thinks they can use their internal laws all over the globe, like it's de facto international law..

The day Assange is extradited/killed i'll turn to enemy of the state. It ends any support of a nation that thinks it can do whatever it wants and starts my active resistance to bring down that government.. And i'm western white middle class pacifist but there's only so much crap i will take.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^spoco2:
Exactly... this is why 99.9999999999999999999% of all conspiracy theories are absolute bunk.
All this shit that people think they 'know' about 9/11, and how it MUST have been thermite, MUST have been re-rigged to demolish.
They really need to get their heads around the fact that what they've come up with is something that is maybe, possible plausible but in NO WAY the most likely, the most reasonable, or even probable... they just come up with convoluted ways that things could conceivably occur and then decide that that MUST be fact.

Speaking of the Kennedy assassination there was no reason to kill him. None. People think it's because he was going to pull the troops out of Vietnam but he was never going to do that, they took one quote and turned it into a promise of his to pull them out like he was fighting more powerful interests. He was a bastard like all the other bastards. His historian even had to rewrite the books to make it look like he was a big pacifist.


there has been various speculation that Kennedy wanted to shut down the fed.
if true, i imagine that would have gotten him rather unliked by essentially the most powerful people in the world.

>> ^spoco2:

Exactly... this is why 99.9999999999999999999% of all conspiracy theories are absolute bunk.
All this shit that people think they 'know' about 9/11, and how it MUST have been thermite, MUST have been re-rigged to demolish.
They really need to get their heads around the fact that what they've come up with is something that is maybe, possible plausible but in NO WAY the most likely, the most reasonable, or even probable... they just come up with convoluted ways that things could conceivably occur and then decide that that MUST be fact.


Speaking of the Kennedy assassination there was no reason to kill him. None. People think it's because he was going to pull the troops out of Vietnam but he was never going to do that, they took one quote and turned it into a promise of his to pull them out like he was fighting more powerful interests. He was a bastard like all the other bastards. His historian even had to rewrite the books to make it look like he was a big pacifist.

I think he was trying to say that if the assholes in town force all the good natured people out, it will cause the collapse of that town faster because there will be no mediating force to balance things out. It will just be horrible people doing horrible things to each other not accomplishing anything good.

That's kind of the plot of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Instead of staying in 'civilization' having the mob of idiots tear apart their creations and perhaps themselves, the intelligent inventors, engineers, artists etc.. all leave and go to live in a hidden utopia where they are free to be excellent and create incredible things that improve the lives of everyone around them.

If I was living in a place were my neighbours were threatening or attacking me, and they were beyond reason, I would leave too. It's a really nice idea that the 'good' people stay in a community and fight to make things better, all the power to them, personally though I would have no interest in becoming a martyr. Just my 2 cents.>> ^A10anis:

>> ^Yogi:
Whether it was morons or assholes, they are the worst people imaginable. I'm not a pacifist or a vegetarian but in my heart I feel that someone has to be seriously messed up in the head to harm a kitten.
Also I have to agree with Cenk here and I don't often. This is similar to my theory that if you're gay move to the coasts. If your town is full of complete morons, leave. Just leave do whatever it takes because it could seriously ruin your life one day if you stay. Get the Fuck out of that town. It's basically the Ayn Rand theory, but a bit different, the more intelligent, kind, and tolerant people leave these horrible places the faster they will collapse.

First, I cannot see the correlation between being a pacifist or a vegetarian to animal cruelty (one could be all three). Second, I cannot see your "theory" as viable. What evidence is their that abandoning your home to the mob brings about their collapse? I would argue that throughout history people have striven and fought, from within their community, for what is right and just. These are/were brave people who we have to thank for many of our freedoms. Simply walking away from a bully is not an assurance that he will stop.

>> ^Yogi:

Whether it was morons or assholes, they are the worst people imaginable. I'm not a pacifist or a vegetarian but in my heart I feel that someone has to be seriously messed up in the head to harm a kitten.
Also I have to agree with Cenk here and I don't often. This is similar to my theory that if you're gay move to the coasts. If your town is full of complete morons, leave. Just leave do whatever it takes because it could seriously ruin your life one day if you stay. Get the Fuck out of that town. It's basically the Ayn Rand theory, but a bit different, the more intelligent, kind, and tolerant people leave these horrible places the faster they will collapse.

First, I cannot see the correlation between being a pacifist or a vegetarian to animal cruelty (one could be all three). Second, I cannot see your "theory" as viable. What evidence is their that abandoning your home to the mob brings about their collapse? I would argue that throughout history people have striven and fought, from within their community, for what is right and just. These are/were brave people who we have to thank for many of our freedoms. Simply walking away from a bully is not an assurance that he will stop.