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May 31, 2006

Vectors of Action Toward peace Part I

Topics: Life Issues
The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest. ----Thomas Carlyle. Sartor Resartus (Book ii, Chapter 6)

To wage peace we should foster freedom. But how? Encourage democratic revolutions? Intervening in dictatorships to topple tyrants? Make war for democracy? No, nothing like this.

Rather, the Positive Peace Principle argues that people should be left alone to form their own communities or states, to live their own lives. If they prefer to live in authoritarian societies (as many Islamists do) or under totalitarian governments (as do communists and fascists), that is their choice (given one can emigrate, a point I will come back to later). Promoting freedom does not mean, then, forcibly converting others into accepting an exchange society and liberal democratic government; nor does it mean waging a crusade against other societies or governments or ideologies. Instead, fostering freedom means to facilitate procedurally and institutionally people making their own choices about how they want to live, whether with freedom or not, as long as they do not try to impose their choice on others. This is the socially just approach.

(Continued here)

Posted by Rudy at May 31, 2006 10:36 PM

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• Vectors of Action Toward peace Part I - May 31, 2006