THOUGHTS ON PACIFISM AND PATRIOTISM FROM SETH BARRETT TILLMAN:

I want to focus on the widely shared moral intuition that the Quakers’ opposition to service in northern and southern armies was admirable. It strikes me that there are two possibilities. First, the Quaker position is seen as admirable specifically because it was religiously rooted. Or, second, it is seen in a positive light because, broadly speaking, principled pacifism is admirable, even if not religiously-rooted.

If our moral intuitions accord with the second view, if we credit the Quakers’ behaviour without regard to their religious inspiration, then why do our standard histories judge President James Buchanan and Chief Justice Taney so harshly?** Buchanan and Taney preferred the United States to go to pieces rather than maintaining it by war. They were unwilling to order or to support a war, and the deaths, which would undoubtedly follow. Yet very few today see Buchanan and Taney as heroes or as acting on moral principles akin to those of the Quakers. Why?

Perhaps, just perhaps, our society only sees pacifism as admirable if it is specifically motivated by religious scruples? Or are these two divergent moral intuitions rooted in a prudential judgment: we can only have reasonable confidence that pacifism is sincere if rooted in religious garb? In other words, secular pacifism might sometimes be real, but we suspect that it is more often than not used strategically, as opposed to sincerely. Or perhaps a third possibility: many hold divergent moral intuitions because they have not thought it all through sufficiently?

I suspect it’s that secular pacifism is often used strategically — just notice how the “antiwar movement” vanished the moment there was no longer a Republican in the White House.