Ms. Crowe

Longtime local pacifist and left-wing activist Frances Crowe of Northampton died this week at the age of 100. That's a pretty good run, and she was in reasonably good health all the way to the end. Crowe is the latest major Valley leftist to die in the past year, preceded by Springfield's Michaelann Bewsee, David Vigneault and Mildred Dunbar. For our local Left to lose three such giants in one year is indeed a major blow to the movement.

Although I am unaware of Frances Crowe ever publicly identifying as a socialist, neither am I aware of any lefty causes she didn't back. However, her primary focus was on a militant form of pacifism which denounced all war on principle as immoral. No one can criticize her for inconsistency, she opposed, protested and was often arrested over every military conflict that occurred during the decades since she began her activism, which was inspired after World War II by the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan.

Of course everyone agrees that war is terrible and should never be resorted to unless as a last resort. I hate violence too, but I don't agree that war is never justified. I admire the activism of these peacers, but not their cause. What Crowe and her supporters were doing was playing on emotions in hopes of getting people to feel that war is never justified, which is nonsense.

If a person broke into your house armed with a knife and threatened to rob you and hurt your family, would you say to the intruder, "I'm a pacifist, and because violence never solves anything, I will therefore do nothing to stop you. Can't we talk about this instead?"

Or would you attack the intruder with every bit of physical force you could muster in order to disarm him and protect your loved ones?

A person behaving like a pacifist in the face of such a threat would actually be encouraging violence, and certainly would inspire no one's respect. Nations are simply collections of people, and while people and their nations should avoid resorting to violence whenever possible, no sensible person believes that it is never necessary. What else can you do when another person - or another country - decides that they are not interested in talking things over, and makes it clear that they intend to get whatever they want by force unless somebody stops them? You respond by giving them what every bully understands best - a punch in the nose in the form of either a fist, if on the personal level, or a cruise missile, on the international one.

It is inaccurate to say, as so many peacers do, that war has never solved any problems. In fact, war has solved some of the biggest problems mankind has ever faced. Was it a mistake to go to war to end slavery? Should Hitler have been confronted by a candlelight vigil? Would communism have fallen to repeated verses of Kumbaya? Will terrorists be convinced to surrender by sit-ins and hunger strikes? Whenever evil has gone on a rampage, the lesson of history is that evil will succeed until those opposed to it fight back.

Yet Crowe and her admirers refused to concede that war is sometimes not only morally justified, but a practical necessity that is sometimes the only means by which the light and the good can triumph over the dark and the evil. If Crowe's "idealism" was ever practiced in real life, our world be a much darker place, a world where violent evil could go unrestrained. Chanting "Give Peace a Chance" in response to a Mao, a Stalin or a Bin Ladin doesn't make you an idealist. It makes you a fool.

Frances Crowe had this in common with the three other Valley leftist leaders who died this year, in that she was also ineffective. Just as Crowe never achieved world peace, Michaelann Bewsee never achieved the socialist revolution she strove for, Dave Vigneault and his crusade for forced busing in Springfield proved to be a ruinously bad policy and Mildred Dunbar consistently defended the local Democrats and their corrupt and incompetent political machine, even as it systemically kept dragging her beloved city to new lows.

Therefore, we must conclude about Crowe as we did about the others: That she was a wonderful inspiration to civic activism, but the shame is one would have wished that Crowe, Bewsee, Vigneault and Dunbar had shown better judgement in the causes to which they devoted their activism.

Speaking of activism, while going to Look Park in Northampton the other day, I was surprised to see this flag flying on a nearby house.

Meanwhile, gonna keep it psychedelic while skywalking on the haters....