The American TFP on Pacifism

“TFP Newsletter”, Vol. III, No. 16 – 1983

Anti-nuclear Freeze Demonstration

[March 1983] Some 1500 people gathered in the nation’s capital in March to voice their opposition to a nuclear freeze. Senators Jeremiah Denton and Robert Dole, Congressmen Kack Kemp and Phil Gramm, and Phyliss Schlafly were among the conservative leaders who addressed the crowd that included a large contingent of representatives of the Veterans of Foreign Wars from all fifty states. The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) lent its full support to the demonstration.

The American TFP’s presence was marked by two huge cartoon-style placards. One placard portrayed an unarmed individual about to be attacked. The attacker thinks: “My enemy is unarmed, I’ll attack him!” The unarmed man provided the occasion for aggression. The second cartoon depicted the same characters. This time, however, the intended victim is armed to the teeth and is on his guard. The attacker concludes: “With this man it is better to keep peace.” The armed man prevented aggression. To be a true pacifist, it to be armed. He maintained the peace.

The American TFP on Pacifism

Should we want peace ?

We must want peace, but we must desire it because of the precepts of justice and charity. These two vir­tues establish the order of our love and works. This order determines that we must desire peace first of all for those who are close to us. That is, one must desire the benefits of peace first of all for his fami­ly, then for his friends, then for the place where he lives, and then for his country as a whole.

Should we desire peace in the international order ?

Yes. We must desire it for all peoples, but accor­ding to the same precepts of justice and charity we must desire it above all for our own people. So, when we consider the whole problem of pacifism, our first concern is to keep the American nation in peace.

Can there be any way of keeping America at peace without keeping it strong and able to defend itself ?

Obviously not, since we know that our country is struggling against a power that during the forty years since the Second World War has conquered scores of peoples and has dominated so many others in such an atrocious manner. A nation that at this very moment is trying in the cruelest fashion to con­summate one more of its unjust conquests. This time the victim is the valiant people of Afghanistan. Let us not fail to mention the great number of civil wars, revolutions, and terrorist attacks of every type that have been perpetrated or instigated by this power all over the world. How can we claim to desire peace for ourselves at the same time as we disarm in the presence of such an aggressor?