Fighting Fire with Water.

• Author: McCarthy, Colman
• Position: Pacifism and nonviolence - Essay

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Since 1982, when I began teaching courses on pacifism and nonviolence, more than 8,000 students have been in my classes--8,000 students who come into class the first day filled with one or more myths about pacifism, the belief, and nonviolence, the method. They too often accept the idea that violence can stop violence, without having been exposed to the view that instead of fighting tire with fire, fight fire with water.

This school year, as in most past years, my classes are at Georgetown University Law Center, American University, the University of Maryland, the Washington Center for Internships and Academics, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, and Wilson High School. This year, the same myths are returning, so let's examine them one at a time.

Pacifism is passivity .

Hardly. The lives both of the well-known pacifists--Gandhi, Dorothy Day, the Berrigan brothers, Martin Luther King Jr.--and lesser knowns like Emily Balch, Scott Nearing, and David Dellinger were tirelessly centered on action and risk-taking. In defiance of one raj or another, their conscience-driven activism led to consequences ranging from imprisonment and death to scorn and isolation. Pacifists have taken to the front lines with a deep arsenal of nonviolent weapons: fasts, boycotts, strikes, marches, sit-ins, civil disobedience, war tax refusal, defiance of blockades, noncooperation with power. Recalling the October 21, 1967, anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon, then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said: "I could not help but think that had the protesters been more disciplined--Gandhi-like--they could have achieved their objective of shutting us down."

Pacifism is about as effective as sticking flowers in gun barrels .

In the past twenty-five years alone, at least six brutal governments have been brought down by well-disciplined citizens who regime-changed without shooting bullets or dropping bombs.

On February 26, 1986, a frightened Ferdinand Marcos, a U.S.-supported dictator, fled the Philippines. Nuns, students, and workers had staged a three-year nonviolent revolt.

On October 5, 1988, Chile's despot, General Augusto Pinochet, another U.S. favorite, was driven from office after five years of strikes, boycotts, and other forms of demands for free elections. A Chilean organizer said: "We didn't protest with arms. That gave us more power."

On August 24, 1989, in Poland the Soviet puppet General Wojciech Jaruzelski fell. Few resisters were killed...