It Takes Courage to be Cowardly (A Zombie Post from 2005)

[I really need to check the drafts more often. I had no idea this was here.]

Today's piece at the Belmont club reminded me of Monty Python.

Specifically, the following passage that Wretchard exerpts from Paul Berman's book Terror and Liberalism:

Blum and his supporters regarded Hitler and the Nazis with horror ... But mostly they remembered the First World War ... They grew thoughtful, therefore. They did not wish to reduce Germany in all its Teutonic complexity to black-and-white terms of good and evil. ... And, having analyzed the German scene in that manner, the anti-war Socialists concluded that Hitler and the Nazis, in railing against the great powers and the Treaty of Versailles, did make some legitimate arguments ... Why not look for ways to conciliate the outraged German people and, in that way, to conciliate the Nazis? ...

The anti-war Socialists of France did not think they were being cowardly or unprincipled in making those arguments. On the contrary, they ... regarded themselves as exceptionally brave and honest. They felt that courage and radicalism allowed them to peer beneath the surface of events and identify the deeper factors at work in international relations-the truest danger facing France.

...made me think of this bit of silliness posted on the Official Monty Python Web Site (www.pythonline.com). More specifically, it made me think of this passage:

And why ? For one reason only, that cowardice is badly thought of. Now I would put it another way. I would say it is badly underrated. Dr. Johnson asserted that 'Mutual Cowardice keeps us in peace'. I believe it could, that this fundamentally realistic behaviour could be a great force for social cohesion. And I suggest that the reason why there is so much more internecine behaviour within the human species than within any other species of animals is because cowardice has got itself a bad name.

Man is a social animal. So let us look at the behaviour of other social animals. Take the wolf - he lives in a pack. Like man he is a hunter. Now, whenever a conflict breaks out between two members of a pack, either wolf can bring it to an immediate halt by making a ritual act of submission, by offering the side of his neck, his most vulnerable part, to his opponent. This immediately stops his opponent's aggressive behaviour. What a sensible system ! No feeling of shame for the submittor. Just peace.

True courage, goes the argument, lies in submission. This is not a new idea, being found, in various forms, in both Christianity and Islam. And to a degree, it has merit. It would indeed be a better world if we all could practice acceptance without feeling shame. To a certain extent, we already do. Submission to some form established authority is sine qua non of a lawful society.

But submission hasn't seemed to have been applied to war. Why not? Why don't weaker states simply accept the rule of stronger ones? Give them what they want? Why doesn't it work?