Word: pacifistic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week the Union resoundingly reversed that pacifist stand. After 3½ hrs. of impassioned speeches from undergraduate and guest speakers, the motion was defeated 416 to 187. YES! cried a Daily Mail headline, THIS TIME THEY WILL FIGHT. It was, in fact, the third Oxford vote to do battle. In 1965, and again in 1981, similar debates were held, and the no votes won, though by narrow margins...
...occasion but today advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament for Britain. One of the featured speakers last week was Member of Parliament Douglas Hogg, who, like his father before him, argued the case for fighting. Another was Historian Max Beloff, 69, who as an Oxford undergraduate 50 years ago supported the pacifist line. This time Beloff, a lord, was on the other side. Said he: "Those of us who voted for the first motion have a duty to atone. Most of those who in this house said that they would not fight did, in fact, fight...
Coming as it did at the height of the nuclear-missile controversy in Western Europe, the debate played to a packed house. Spectators listened politely as Pacifist Leader Helen John warned, "If there's a war, we won't be able to debate again in 50 years." But they jeered when she called Britain "an occupied country" because of the U.S. military bases there. Conversely, they applauded when former Prime Minister Lord Alec Douglas-Home said, "I am fearful when I see unilateralists sending out signals to a dictatorship that is mobilized with enormous armed forces and practices...
...particular jeopardy were members of the small but active unofficial peace organization that sprang up last June under the name Group to Establish Trust Between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. Its members have been harassed by the KGB for spontaneously forming a pacifist group outside the ranks of the official Soviet Peace Committee. Then, late last year, TASS launched a strong anti-Semitic attack on the pacifists, several of whom are Jewish. Though there is no evidence that the peace group members have a pro-Israeli bias, TASS made the claim that "while supposedly fighting for peace, they openly regret...
...Jesus ever vengeful? Ordinary people are. "Execution is primarily a vengeance mechanism," says Notre Dame's Hauerwas, a pacifist, "but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Vengeance is a way society gestures to itself that justice has force against injustice." A main point of criminal laws, after all, is to make private feuds unnecessary. "No society should put the burden on me to seek personal retribution," says New York University's Herbert I. London, a social historian. "The state has an obligation not to make me a killer...