David Lewis Schaefer moonlights at National Review Online, discussing the disappointing arrogance that swept over Gandhi in his appraisal of the tides of evil prior to the Second World War.

Gandhi is celebrated no more in my mind than any other historical figure. He did indeed free India fro British colonial rule but in his idealist abstraction, devoured the moment of his triumph and wrongly proclaimed his satyagrahi as the panacea for world order and stability. Like a 1950s salesman who'd have you believe that baking soda can make a great birthday cake while it cures influenza, gets you better gas mileage and delouses the dog, Gandhi refused to accept the circumstance and resolution of his experience as necessarily unique. A dying, toothless empire on the verge of a graceful collapse into sincere, representative government would never have violently challenged peaceful protest. But Lenin smashed nonviolent resistence to pieces, as did Franco and certainly, Hitler. Gandhi, a man who arbitrarily promoted himself to infallible sage, thought otherwise:

Of course, Gandhi added, “the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history,” and “if there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.” Hitler’s regime was showing the world “how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism.” Nonetheless, the Hindu leader rejected that notion, since “I do not believe in any war.” And for Britain, France, and America to declare war on Hitler’s regime would bring them “no inner joy, no inner strength.”

Having rejected both the plea that Palestine should be offered as a place of refuge for the Jews and the idea that the Western democracies should launch a war to overthrow Hitler, Gandhi offered only one avenue for the Jews to resist their persecution while preserving their “self-respect.” Were he a German Jew, Gandhi pronounced, he would challenge the Germans to shoot or imprison him rather than “submit to discriminating treatment.” Such “voluntary” suffering, practiced by all the Jews of Germany, would bring them, he promised, immeasurable “inner strength and joy.” Indeed, “if the Jewish mind could be prepared” for such suffering, even a massacre of all German Jews “could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy,” since “to the God-fearing, death has no terror.”

Yes, death is without its sting to the faithful; unfortunately, death without struggle for those of us not blameless - and, absent the holy power through submission of Christ, therefore indebted to protecting the innocent with every last ounce of strength - is a homicidally arrogant and altogether circumspect abdication of the very life of goodness, "inner strength and joy" or what have you, that we are to achieve. Christ could submit himself to evil men and save mankind; we cannot. If we submit to evil, we condemn all of humanity on earth.

Pacifist methods for political by mortal men work only with an authorities Schaeffer correctly describes as "benign." Elsewhere, it simply functions as naive appeasement.