I do not understand pacifism

Economics Political Theory
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Hi all,

I have been posting on this forum for a year or more now, and lurking for even longer. Over the past 5 or so years I have moved from what you could call uninformed, Christian neo-conservatism to voluntarism or I guess anarchism (not much of a difference from what I can tell). I still consider myself to be a Christian fwiw, and in my view anarchism is the only “political” philosophy that is commensurate with the teachings of Christ. I agree wholeheartedly with the NAP.

My question is for pacifists, or those who feel comfortable explaining pacifism. Even better if it is a Tolstoyish Christian pacifist anarchism kind of thing. I have never never read any Tolstoy but I’ve heard he is pretty influential when it comes to pacifism.

Can you explain the differences between pacifism and volantarism? Do pacifists disavow the use of self defense, or retaliation, or what? What books, youtube videos, serious thinkers should I know about if I want to better understand it? What are some of the common critiques? Are there already some good threads on this topic here?

Thanks.

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Seeing as how Bob Murphy is anarchist, Christian, and pacifist, (and Mises faculty), I’d say he’s your perfect sounding board. (Too bad you just missed the “ask me anything”.) Although, I haven’t watched it yet, and it’s over an hour long, so he may very well touch on that subject. If not, I’d check his blog archives for any writings, and then ask him directly. There’s a contact form on the site, or if you prefer to have a record of what you sent him, you can use email.

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(Too bad you just missed the “ask me anything”.)

I know!! I actually didn’t know about it until yesterday; I would’ve enjoyed running that one by him. The only non-econ question he got to was regarding his and Gene Callahan’s critique of Hoppe’s argumentation ethics. He spoke for like 20 minutes on the practical impossibility of empirical data changing an Austrian/Keynesian’s worldview, another 20 minutes or so on bitcoin especially as it relates to the regression theorem, another 15 or so on the Krugman debate, and he finished up with the argumentation ethics. Hopefully he does that sort of thing again.