It's rather hard to be an idealistic pacifist if you're within living memory of WWII, though some people surely accomplished it. It's especially easy in this day and age to mentally evade the notion that force is sometimes not only justified, but necessary and morally obligatory. It would not have been so easy to do so during the era that countries like Germany, Russia, and Japan were invading neutral countries and mass-executing their citizens.
"We will bury you" - Soviet dictator Kruschev, addressing a gathering of Western ambassadors in 1956, 3 years before this ad.
When a man with his finger on the button of half the world's nukes says things like that, you damn well better put your best minds to work figuring out how not to let it happen.
Setting aside the fact that almost nobody would have agreed to it, surrendering and living under communism would have sacrificed human life as well, just as it did for every other communist country.
Comments
You assume that idealist pacifists could only exist in the current civilization and not any other.
It's rather hard to be an idealistic pacifist if you're within living memory of WWII, though some people surely accomplished it. It's especially easy in this day and age to mentally evade the notion that force is sometimes not only justified, but necessary and morally obligatory. It would not have been so easy to do so during the era that countries like Germany, Russia, and Japan were invading neutral countries and mass-executing their citizens.
"We will bury you" - Soviet dictator Kruschev, addressing a gathering of Western ambassadors in 1956, 3 years before this ad.
When a man with his finger on the button of half the world's nukes says things like that, you damn well better put your best minds to work figuring out how not to let it happen.
The nuclear balance of power in '56 (and indeed well into the 60s) was very one sided - this, after all, was the time of the fictitious "bomber gap":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap
The Soviets were, with some justification, terrified of a US first strike at the time.
You are still implicitly going with the idea that someone has to defend the current civilisation on behalf of inferior pacifists who won't.
What if there's a peaceful answer which sacrifices way of life instead of human life? Would supporting it be "luxury"?
Setting aside the fact that almost nobody would have agreed to it, surrendering and living under communism would have sacrificed human life as well, just as it did for every other communist country.
The original quote: "Like it or not, but the history is working on us. We will attend your funerals".