Quote:
Originally Posted by Wite3
Mark,
You essentially asked...what would happen if a nation of objectors stood up to a nation of war, imperialism, and violence...
The answer is you get India, the largest democratic republic in the world. Gandhi took a revolution of violence in the early part of the 20th century and turned it to a movement of civil disobedience eventually leading to the creation of India and Pakistan. Through strikes, mutinies, sit-ins, walk outs, etc. he created a movement that paralyzed the British.
Also the notion that we do not need objectors is a very limited, and frankly, a very disturbing trend.
The objector acts as a voice of opposition, a voice of conscience. People need to have that voice. It often leads to great outcomes. One of those great outcomes was the great nation you now live in and supposedly support. As someone mentioned above, you can both be an objector to war and still serve. Some of the first objectors were Quakers and Mennonites. They refused to fight in the Revolutionary War even through they were strong supporters of the Revolution itself (on grounds of taxes, freedom of thought and religion, freedom of movement, etc.). What did they do, they supplied the revolutionaries. Often with food, clothing, wagons, tools, etc. With out their help, what might have happened.
The idea of objectors is necessary and often overlooked.
Joshua
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Really? A somewhat flawed or idealistic analogy. Britain was not North Vietnam, North Korea, the USSR, China, Japan, Germany, etc. Do you honestly feel that a nation full of conscientious objectors would have worked well for the South Vietnamese? Maybe you should ask the Cambodians how well that worked out? Or France?
It really depends largely on who you are 'conscientiously objecting' against and what's in it for them (one way or the other).