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War & Peace

Pacifism Is Not Passivism

Duane Cady tells us why pacifism isn’t sitting back and letting the masters of war have their way.

Pacifism rarely gets taken seriously due to a widespread cultural bias: ‘everybody knows’ that pacifism is hopelessly naïve and idealistic. Meanwhile, war is accepted as normal, practical and realistic. And although pacifists such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are respected for their moral strength, they are often dismissed by the dominant culture as unrealistic. However, when ‘warism’ – taking war for granted as morally acceptable – becomes recognized to be, like racism and sexism, a prejudice that distorts our better judgment, then we can try to set the bias aside and openly consider varieties of pacifism.

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