Raised a Pacifist

As I’ve mentioned before, my father died when I was very young. But he left me a legacy that colors my thought to this day.

My father tried to raise me as a pacifist. He didn’t believe in settling issues with violence and wanted to instill that belief system in me.

That is, until he got that call from the school.

“Mr. Freiheit, we’d like you to come in to discuss the fights your son has been getting into.”

“But, he shouldn’t be fighting. I’ve tried to teach him not to fight!”

“That’s just it, Mr. Freiheit, he won’t fight. He just stands there and takes the beating. But what disturbs us is that children that normally wouldn’t think about hitting another child will beat on him because they know that they can get away with it. He won’t hit back.”

Now, to give him credit, my father recovered rather well. He took me out after school and gave me some pointers on how to fight. Not that a non-violent person knows much about fighting, but as a farm boy, he did learn something that he was able to pass on to me.

My start in second grade in a new school would have gone a lot different had he not taught me something. About a dozen bullies got the new kid cornered, were picking up sticks and stones, and were going to teach the new kid the pecking order on the playground. I refused to participate in the beating. Or rather, I followed my father’s advice: “You take the guy out front, making all the fight talk, and you close his mouth for him.”

So I did. It actually required three stitches to put his nose back in proper working order.

I never had to fight in that school again. I had learned something that day that General Douglass McArthur had spoken about, “Timidity breeds conflict and courage often prevents it. Never enter a conflict unless you are committed to victory.”

Later I found that bullies learn to offset the advantages of one student who can and will defend himself by attacking without warning in large groups. So I went back to getting beat. But at least this time I resisted the beatings as much as possible, sometimes actually causing some damage. They had to pay something for the privilege of beating me.

Later, after I had started a family, I trained in Tae Kwon Do, and as these things usually go, never got in another fight.

But, in all deference to my father, I’m not a pacifist. And I’m not a non-violent person.

I learned from Robert Heinlein, in his novel The Puppet Masters, that "The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, any time, and with utter recklessness. If we did not learn that from the slugs, well--"Dinosaurs, move over! We are ready to become extinct!""

I also learned the Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap") from L. Neil Smith. "A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

By that definition, I’m a libertarian.