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 *From:THE DRUIDS PROGRESS, Report #5. The DRUIDS PROGRESS is         *
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       WARRIORS AND SOLDIERS AND COPS -- OH MY!
       ----------------------------------------
                    By the Archdruid


   As time goes by, and A.D.F. continues to grow, we are attracting
people from many different occupations - white collar, blue and pink
collar, and now khaki collars as well. We have several law enforcement
officers, both public and private ("rent-a-cops"), as well as several
members in the U.S. military. Some of tehse have written to us praising
the fact that ADF does not seem to be as "anti-warrior" as most
Neo-Pagan groups. Some even want to set up a "military grove" to be a
sort of free-floating resource for ADF members in the armed forces.
One member held a workshop for Neopagans in the military at the ADF
Harpers' Hall pavilion during a Neopagan Festival in 1987. Another
wants to pursue the possibility of having officially recognized Druid
chaplains in teh armed services. Yet another has dreams of resurrecting
a Mithraic cult within ADF.
   It's obviously gotten to be time to deal with some of the issues
that most Neopagan groups have been ignoring - specifically those of
vilance, self-defense, and the ethics of being a cop or a soldier in
modern times.
   Insofar as ADF is going to have official doctrines (note that I did
NOT say "dogmas") about these issues; ones that you, as members, can
take into a court of law, this essay is a first attempt at articulating
the arguments upon which I have based my current opinions. Naturally,
I expect some of you to disagree strongly (but I hope not violently!)
with my conclusions, and you are encouraged to send in zines for
future issues of D.P. This essay has not been easy to write. Our single
most generous supporting member happens to be in the military and has
given a great deal of thought to these issues, obviously coming to
very different conclusions than I have. I hope he'll write a reply for
the next issue. I'm also going to send a copy of this to the folks who
publish the Pagan Military Network newsletter for their feedback.
Eventually we can all work out a consensus that most of us (and the
planet) can live with.

   Like many members of the Neopagan community, I grew up as part of
the 60's counterculture. Our primary interactions with law enforcement
officers and soldiers were generally of the negative sort. We saw them
as the upholders of a corrupt status quo, mouthing platitudes about
freedom and democracy while they beat in our heads or napalmed little
children. Yet, most of us grew up thrilling to the adventures of King
Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood and his Merry
Men, and other noble, idealistic warriors. In later years, some of us
studied the martial arts, and watched television shows such as "Kung
Fu", where the emphasis was on the lone warrior who is a master of
him/herself first, and of others only incidentally.
   All of these experiences gave us conflicting ideas about the nature
and role of violence in our lives. Those of our generation who
suffered in Vietnam or in the ghettos are musch less idealistic than
those of us who have been on the dojo floor or the medievalist
tournament field.
   As we create a religion for the future, we must have a coherent
body of polytheological opinions about violence. These opnions must
reflect our ideals, while being fully informed about historical
realities, if we hope to change the world enough so that future
history will not simply be a bloody repetition of the past.
   The awareness of this essential conflict between practical survival
needs and ethical ideals is not new. Our Indo-European ancestors (like
most other peoples of the past) spent a lot of time thinking about it,
and preserved their wisdom in their myths, sagas, and folktales. So
before I begin to express my own conclusions about the various issues
involved, I'd like to quote from Jaan Puhvel's excellent book on
Indo-European myth and epis, Comparative Mythology (John Hopkins Univ.
Press, 1987). After repeated tellings of teh standard Indo-European
warrior myth as it appears in the different cultures, he has this to
say (in the chapter on "God and Warrior") about it:

      Basic to that [standard Indo-European Warrior] myth is a
   profound anomic [lawlessness, social alienation] of the human
   and societal condition, rooted in the use and abuse of power.
   Order, securitry, peace - positive conditions all - tend to
   depend for their preservation on the readiness of something
   that is inherently destructive, such as "security forces" or
   a military machine with the attendant mentality. If boosters
   of law enforcement like to describe their favorite agents of
   public order as a thin phalanx protecting civilization from
   anarchy, there is an even thinner line seperating champion
   from beserk, police action from police riot. Those trained
   as agents of aggresion and represion may experience difficulty
   functioning as normal human beings under great stress, or
   conversely when the pressure is off. Such abnormality also
   induces clannishness vis-a-vis the general society, "fraternal
   orders", "Protective" associations, gangsm juntas, and other
   forms of structured apartness.
      This kind of perennial tension is reflected in the ancient
   myths. Warlike exaltation, martial ecstasy where fury gets
   out of hand, is displayed by the Third Horatius, by Cuchulainn
   by the berserkir. The Maruts, sodalas, fiana, or einherjar
   constituted bands with their own inner structure and interctional
   dynamics, with a collective svadha or "ethos" (the two cognates
   meaning etymologically 'self-law, autonomy') that was only
   capriciously at the call of a commanding figure such as Indra,
   Publicola, Finn or Odin. The warlord himself could be equally
   self-willed individualist and from inspired and inspiring leader
   shade over into a lone-wolf kind of martial toiler (Indra led the
   Maruts, and yet he was also eka- 'one, alone, unique', acted
   yathavasam 'as he chose' and had a svadah of his own). The warrior
   thus had an ambivalant role as a single champion or part of a
   self-centered corps or coterie, both a society's external defender
   and its potential internal menace.

After discussing the myths about warrior kings and warrior gods, Puhvel
devotes the rest of the chapter to the stories about mythic heroes, of
the sort that many NeoPagans who perceive themselves to be warriors
patter themselves after. Here's what he has to say (with my comments in
the square brackets):

   ...A Third type was the warrior who was not divine but a saga hero
   manipulated by deity, not a king but merely in royal service. This
   is the kind most marked by a tense relationship to the environment
   where he operated, to his divine and human patrons and his social
   constituency at large. He had no agglomeration of transfunctional
   attributes to lose [as the warrior kings and warior gods did], but
   he nevertheless managed to offend (or was perceived as offending)
   all segments of the social order by a structured set of misdeeds.
   With his flawed willfullness  (or perhaps his "programmed",
   predestined, predictable nature) he comprimised his career by nadir
   episodes that involved impious/unjust/sacrilegious, cowardly/under
   handed/unwarriorlike, and covetous/venal/adulterous acts respectively
   [the 'three sins' against the three Indo-European social functions
   of legal and spiritual rulership, courasgeous defense of the
   community, and prosperity and fertility]... The varieties described
   are found in epic, saga and folklore, from the fells of Scandinavia
   to the jungles of India, from the Bay of Bengalk via the Gulf of
   Argos and the Tiber to Galaway Bay. These kinds are not extinct -
   they were spotted not long ago on both the Mekong and the Potomac
   [and in Central America, Afghanistan, Africa, Moscow, etc].

   As I mentioned in D.P.#1, "one of the primary tasks of the clergy has
always been to ride herd on the warriors...Since the primary threat to
life on this planet now comes from out-of-control warriors, it's time we
started taking that duty seriously again. "We can no longer ignore the
issues involved. Here, in no particular order, are some of my thoughts:

   Despite my loose use of the former term in D.P.#1, I perceive important
distinctions between "warriors" and "soldiers," with the former word
having positive meanings for me and the later negative ones. In order to
define my terms clearly, I will now oversimplify:
   A "warrior" is a person who has been trained to use violence both
effectively and selectively, but who refrains from doing so except when
she/he perceives a genuine danger to her/himself or to others in the
community whom she/he deems worthy of protection. She or he strives to
use exactly the minimum amount of violence (if any) of whatever sort is
necessary to defeat the danger, and is willing to risk her/his life in
the process. A warrior prefers to see teh face of his/her enemy, and
takes personal responsibility for the ethics of his/her behavior. While
she/he may enjoy her/his occupation and may experience and appreciate the
thrill of battle, she/he does not enjoy or disregard the emotional and
moral effects of killing. Warriors will comete with each other, not just
to hone their combat skills, but to emphasize their indiividual identities.
Courage, honor, integrity, and self-awareness are the ideals I associate
with this image of the warrior.
   A "soldier", on the other hand, I perceive as a hired killer, whose
primary task is not the defense of his/her community, although that claim
is usually made, but rather the defense of that community's political,
social, religious, and economic rulers. A soldier enjoys being violent,
especially when she/he has superior odds, and often becomes addicted to
the battle frenzy (berserkirgang) experience --many to the point of
receiving sexual satisfaction from the destruction they cause. He or she
will kill any man, woman, or child that he/she is ordered to kill,
simply because he/she was told to do so (as with the Russian airmen who
shot down K.A.L. flight 007, or the American seamen who blew up that
Iranian airliner). A soldier is perfectly willing to kill at a distance,
without ever seeing the faces of his/her victims, and even when she/he
sees them up close does not consider them to be "real" human beings
(but "huns" or "Japs", or "Gooks", or "Micks", etc). A soldier
considers rape and plunder to be a natural right in time of war, even
if the war is against citizens of his/her own country. Perhaps most
importantly for the purposes of this essay, a soldier takes NO
RESPONSIBILITY for the ethics of his/her actions, since she/he is
"only following orders".
   To transform a person from a civilian into a soldier, its generally
necessary to extinguish her/his individuality and integrity, and to
replace them as much as possible with group identity and unthinking,
machinelike obedience. (Robert Anton Wilson has an excellant, and
somewhat terrifying analysis of military basic training as a classic
"brainwashing" process in 'Prometheus Rising'.) This obedience to
authority, "winning", and emotional insensativity to the impact of
his/her behavior on the lives of others, are the ideals of the soldier.
Of course, most generals and admirals will tell the general public
(and their soldiers whenever the public happens to be listening) that
the warrior ideals are the ones that soldiers do and should have, but
this publically presentable official message is easily drowned out
by the other messages delivered during basic training.
   Now obviously this is a slanted, dualistic view, one that comes
from growing up reading about Nazi war crimminals, seeing films of
soldiers dropping napalm on small children, studying the history of
the European, American and Russian Empires, going to High school
near a major military base, etc. and coparing the data gained from
these sources to the idealistic legends mentioned earlier.
   But in order to avoid monotheistic dualism here, lets create a
value spectrum with the above defined "warrior" on one end, and the
"soldier" on the other. Most modern police officers, security guards,
and members of the armed forces will fit somewhere along the line
between the two extremes. ABout the only ones who will come close
to being real warriors will be those individuals who have dedicated
their lives to the Martial arts, and a few political and social
activists.
   (Since some people like to play games with the phrase "martial
arts", saying that anything having to do with the Roman god Mars
should be counted, including soldiering and C.I.A. assasinations,
let me emphasize that when I say "martial arts", I'm refering to
Tai Chi, Akido, Karate, Kung Fu, etc as well as similar practices
from non-oriental sources, when followed as a philosophy and a way
of life.)
   Perhaps we need two more axes of polarity here, a vertical one
for degree of sanity or insanity, and another going off at right
angles to the first two, for ethicality and unethicality of
character. Warriors going beserk or cops rioting against a group of
protestors would go near the insane end of the sainty-insanity
scale, while a C.I.A. Hitman or the members of a S.W.A.T. team trying
to eliminate a sniper might belong near the sane end. Of course,
that hit-man would probably belong on the Wrong side of the ethical-
unethical spectrum (depending on his/her target?), as would a Mafia
hit-man, Nazi Stormtrooper, or a Russian airman dropping napalm on
children in Afghanistan. As American Neopagans, we might decide that
the soldiers who fought in the American Revolutionary War were ethical
to do so (our English members might disagree) or those in the U.S.
Cavalry during the "Indian Wars" (unless you're part or all Native
American, or have studied the history carefully, in which case those
same soldiers become unethical), etc.
    Many of these judgements are dificult to make, especially if you
belong to a multivalued, pluralistic religion such as Neopaganism.
But it should be clear that, despite the conflicting ideals discussed
earlier, not all warriors are ethical and sane, and not all soldiers
are unethical and insane. Nonetheless, I will make the argument, for
the rest of this essay, that in our time it is far more difficult
for a soldier to remain both ethical and sane from a Neopagan point
of view than it is for a warrior to do so (law enforcement officers
wind up in the middle - as usual).

   Let's get down to some ethical/spiritual nitty-gritty:
   IT IS WRONG, under any and all circumstances, to drop napalm on
kids, or to machine-gun women with babies, or to launch a missile
towards abuilding full of elderly people.
   IT IS WRONG to kill a total stranger, simply because his/her
politicians disagree with yours as to the best way the two of you
should be swindled.
   IT IS WRONG, to kill, maim, and torture people simply in order to
maintain the wealth and power of multinational corporations, or of
the central party apparatus, or of the leader's of one's religion.
   IT IS WRONG to defoliate thousands of acres of forests or jungles,
or to poison rivers and wells, or to poison rivers and wells, or to
disseminate new diseases.
   IT IS WRONG to help dictators to more effctively torture, rape,
and enslave their own citizens (or those of neighboring countries),
no matter what benefits our own political and economic masters might
gain.
   IT IS WRONG FOR ANY REASON THAT A HUMAN IS CAPABLE OF INVENTING,
to create, maintain or use weapons that can kill every man, woman,
child, plant and animal on Earth, raping our Mother to death with
nuclear fire. Our planet can survive a hundred or even a thousand
years of domination by any "evil empire". It won't survive World
War Three. To assist in any way, shape or form in killing the entire
biosphere (at this point the only one we know exists) is the ultimate
blasphemy which a worshipper of Mother Earth could commit.
   I could not live with myself if I did not know, on a gut-level
basis, that these things are Wrong. All the metaphysical and
theological and political excuses in the world cannot change these
crimes into acts of virture or herosim.
   Yet each of them is an action that any member of most modern army,
navy or air forces (especially those of the "superpowers" - what they
used to call empires) can expect to be ordered to commit, sooner or
later. The excuses will be grandiose, the justifications noble, and
the instructions quite clear: "Do as you're told - That's an order!"
   Each and every one of these actions is one that I expect a Neopagan
(Or a sane, ethical warrior of any other faith) to refuse to perform,
even at the risk of court-martial and execution (that's easy for me
to say - all I have to worry about is execution, legally or illegally
for the 'treasons' of voicing these opinions). THus, I believe that
Neopagans, whether Wiccans, Druids or members of any other variety
of Neopaganism, have no place in a modern superpower's military.
   (The Coast Guard or a state militia might be an exception to this
basic principle, except when they are performing functions unconnected
to actually defending the lives of the populance, but one would have
to evaluate each such organization individually. I know that the
National Guard in California, for example, actually spends most of its
time fighting forest fires, but I remember when it was used against
antiwar demonstrators back in the 60's. The kids who shot the kids at
Kent State were members of the Ohio National Guard. And lately the
Coast Guard has been spending most of its time busting drug smugglers
which gets us into the topic of Neopagans and law enforcement, to be
discussed later in this essay).
   As for those Neopagans who are currently in the military, and who
are sensibly unwilling to risk death by firing squad, I believe that
you should attempt to get out, by any comparitively ethical means
necessary, as soon as you can. If escaping really is impossible (and
not just damned inconvient), you should try to get transferred to
units where your activities will be only remotely connected (they
can never be completely unconnected) to those of others actually
committing the crimes of the sort mentioned.
   The question of whether or  not we should have Druid or other
Neopagan chaplains for Neopagans who choose to join or remain in the
military is a messy one. If, as I believe, you're not supposed to be
there in the first place, what role does a chaplain have other than
to betray his/her faith by telling you it's OK? Would the military
allow a chaplain who went around persuading folks to quit? The
suggestion that Neopagans, whether chaplains or laity, should be in
the military in order to enlighten the armed forces from within is
absurd - as soon as you got close to actually changing people's
minds, you'd be arrested for "subversion." A discussion of Neopagan
chaplains is quite moot, however. The U.S. military in 1987
commissioned it's first non-Judeo-Christian chaplain (a Buddhist!)
and is in no rush to have chaplains from any other minority faiths.
Besides, military chaplains are expected to have been ordained after
a period of college level training that would have rpepared them for
full-time, professional clergy work - and we don't have anyone like
that yet and are unlikely to for several years.
   As for young people facing the draft, I say you should refuse to
register, or emigrate elsewhere as soon as your goverment actually
starts taking kids. If you do register, do it as a Conscientous
Objector (and be prepared for a long, messy, fight).
   I can hear the screams now! "How dare you tell us what to do!"
"How can you make our ethical decisions for us!" "This isn't the
Catholic Church, you know!" "Who made you the spokesperson for all
Pagandom!"
   Well, nobody did. I'm the Archdruid of A.D.F. and that's about
all. Nonetheless I have the same rights as anyone, polytheologian
or not, to express my religious opinions. And as a "spiritual leader",
I have an obligation to be truthful about my beliefs. Every other
major religion in the world has doctrines about these issues. It's
about time we started working ours out.
   As for the Norse warrior types in our ranks, I can only say that
the better (sane and ethical) old Norse heroes would have had nothing
but contempt for modern military procedures (although I suppose some
of the Vikings might have approved of the raping, looting and
pillaging part of current jungle warfare). Mithraism was practiced
by many of the Roman soldiers who exterminated the Druids in Gaul,
and who massacred our priests and priestesses at the main Druid
Seminary on the Isle of Angelsey, so I'm inclined to feel uncharitable
towards the faith. Nonetheless, it's certainly possible that some
modern Neopagan warriors may choose to follow the Mithraic path.
I'm uncertain, even though it is Indo-European, whether or not it
belongs in A.D.F. (I'm not planning on ecouraging thuggee either,
no matter how authentic it might be).
   "But what about national defense?" I hear some of you asking.
Well, if the Chinese come swimming across the Pacific Ocean with atom
bombs clenched between their teeth, or the Mexicans come charging
over the border with their third-rate weaponry (we've never let them
have more than they needed to keep their own people properly
tyranized), attacking San DIego and El Paso, I suppose even I might
concede to a necessity for some sort of National Defense. But my
response ("If I were King of the Forest!") would not be to whip out
weapons that can kill thousands or millions of innocent bystanders,
but rather (if physical violence really were necessary) to unleash
professional assasins against the individuals in the invading
country's goverment who are responsible. Of course, this sort of
measured response, aimed directly at the genuinely guilty parties,
is simply "not done."
   I've had several acquaintences, who used to be in military
intelligence organizations, independently tell me that U.S. spies
advised our goverment back in 1938 to assasinate Adolph Hitler
before he got too dangerous. This plan was vetoed on the grounds
that fighting a war by assasination was likely to get OUR politicians
assasinated in retaliation. So to save the lives of a handful of
politicans in the US and Europe, twenty million men, women and
children died. A direct result of that war was the invention and use
of the very weapons that threaten our planet's survival today.
Frankly, I would rather have lost twenty or thirty politicians.
   None of this deals with the ethics of assasination, of course.
And so far, our goverment assasins have proven much more effective
at eliminating democratically elected (but economically threatening)
leaders (both foreign and domestic) than at killing genuine threats
to world peace. Nonetheless, I would far rather live in a world
where wars were fought personally by the people who benefited most
from them (the generals, the politicians, the dictators/kings, the
multibillionaires, the commissars, etc.) than in what we have now-
those folks pulling puppet strings to make the rest of us dance, and
die, to their tunes.
   But that's a fantasy. We are stuck with what we have. The CIA,
the KGB and all the other alphabet comrades take their orders from
the powers-that-be in each nation/corporation, not from ordinary
citizens like thee and me. This may not change in our lifetime. So
even if you could convince yourself that murder is sometimes
ethically justifiable, a career in these agencies is going to be
no more ethical than one in the associated armed forces.
   But what about the theory of the "just war"? That always comes
up in these discussions. I say it's just a war if you defend
yourself when the KKK attacks your farmhouse and tries to shoot
your husband and kids, burn down your barn, and rape your cow.
At that point you're ethically, morally and even legally (outside
of New York City) entitled to defend yourself and your family from
"a clear and present danger." But wen the Front for the Liberation
of XYZ attacks its country's Gestapo in an effort to free prisoners
who are being tortured for trying to organize labor unions, and
the Russians or the AMericans (or the British, the Israelis, the
French, the Chinese, etc) send in tanks, bombers, napalm and experts
to train the Gestapo in better torturing techniques - no, thats
not a just war for the invaders - no matter what impact the results
might have on teh President's or the Chairman's Swiss bank accounts,
and no matter what noninterference might do to the next quater's
profit margin or the current five year plan.
   The overwhelming majority of wars that have been fought in
America's brief history, like those of Britain, France and other
Western nations, have had little to do with "preserving human
freedom." Our Revolution and the War of 1812 were fought so that a
bunch of wealthy men (George Washington and friends) wouldn't have
to pay taxes to England, at least as much as they were for "life,
liberty and the pursuit of (male, land-owning) happiness." The
Civil War was an economical battle between the Second Wave
industrial North and the First Wave agricultural South, with the
freeing of slaves an afterthought done more for it's devistating
economic impact than for any concern for human rights. The genocide
campaigns against the Native Americans, the multiple invasions of
Central America, The Spanish American War, etc. were all done for
the purpose of gaining physical territory and/or exclusive
trading "rights" ("Hi, Give us all your natural resources at dirt
cheap prices or we'll kill you!"). The First World War was for the
benefit of the banks and the munitions manufacturers (who also
had a hand in setting up WWII).
   Even I have to admit that Hitler needed stopping, although I've
already indicated one way it could have been prevented (by all
the Gods, it could have been prevented by the WWI victors simply
not having been so nasty afterwards!), but the war in the Pacific
was the direct result of Japanese and the American Empires
disputing territory thousands of miles from either's home turf
(neither of them really had any 'rights' to the Kingdom of Hawaii).
Korea and Vietnam were also territorial grabs. We wanted to make
sure that prime agricultural land (before defoliation, the
Mekong Delta used to be called 'the Bread Basket of Southeast Asia')
rubber plantations, tungsten mines, offshore oil deposits, etc.,
remained under our control (or that of our 'friends'), rather
than let the rival Chinese or Russian Empires have them. Not to
mention the wonderful locations for air, land and naval bases
close to our rivals (no "Monroe Doctrine" for our competitors,
no-sir-ree, just for us).
   None of this shhould be surprising, except for those who believe
their high school history books or the stories in the mass media.
Every Empire in history has acted this way: The Russian Empires
(both Czarist and Communist), the Chinese ones, the British, etc.,
going all the way back to Mesopotamia, have all grabbed as much
loot as they could and have made up whatever excuses, if any,
their soldiers needed to hear. In most of tehmodern empires,
however, it has become necessary to claim that one's invading
armies are not conquering turf, but are liberating toiling masses
instead. China doesn't commit genocide in Tibet, it "educates
people away from their superstitions." America doesn't prop up
sleezy dictators who are killing their own citizens, we "help
friendly goverments to maintain a strong defense against
communisim." Russia didn't invade  Afghanastan to gain access
to the Middle East and create another buffer state around its
national borders, it was "helping a friendly goverment to
maintain a strong defense against capitalism" - oops, that one's
already been used."
   The bottom line of all this political discussion is that
goverments - all goverments - habiotually lie to their citizens
and thhe rest of the world, especially when planning and
executing wars. The only thing that makes ours any better is
that the U.S. was founded by a bunch of agnostic, skeptical,
Freemasons who didn't trust goverments very much - including
the one they were founding - and who tried to see to it that
intelligent people could keep the corruption and tyranny down
to a dull roar. But that's impossible if citizens naively
believe whatever whatever their goverment tells them is true,
routinely obey whatever orders they are told have come down
from on high, and object to messages like this one being
published. I'm not the first to point out these unpleasant and
"treasonous" truths - Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Mencken,
and other famous/infamous people repeatedly remarked on the
gullibiliity of teh general public when faced with official
versions of reality.
   People not only tend to believe what they're told when
goverments are leading young men off to slaughter, they tend
to actively disbelieve any evidence to the contrary. Historians
now know that the Lusitania, supposedly an innocent cruise
liner whose sinking by the German navy was one of the primary
incidents that led the U.S. into entering WWI, was indeed
carrying ammunition to the British. Evidence has accumilated
that the U.S. battleship Maine was blown up by American spies
in order to create an incident to goad a reluctant public
into the Spanish-American War. John F. Kennedy, who was
begining to de-escalate the Vietnam War, was "coincidentally"
assasinated, then replaced with someone who was quite williing
to keep the war going as long as needed. All this has been
published over and over again, in scholarly jopurnals, in the
back pages of newspapers, in obscure political magazines. But
very few people read these unpopular facts, and most of those
who do don't believe them, since they contradict the history
books, the goverment, the press, and the military. Those who
do believe are so cynical that they don't think it really
matters - after all, whats' done is done.
   In one sense they're right. We can't change the past. All
we can try to do is to remember as many of its lessons as
possible. Amoung those many lessons are (a) goverments seldom
are willing to pass up any opportunity to gain greater power,
(b) goverments always become more powerful in wartime, and
therefore (c) there is a built-in incentive for goverments
to be iin a constant state of war. So we not only have to
watch the scoundrels in our own goverment, but those in all
the others as well.
   How does all this political skepticism tie into Neopagan
ethical approaches to military service? Very simply. When
our goverment tells us, or anybody else's goverment tells its
citizens, that awar is necessary for "national defense," the
odds are a thousand to one that the goverment is lying. For
the individual member of the armed forces, murder, rape and
pillage, whether directo or by remote control, become even
harder to excuse when you haven't even a shred of hard
evidence that teh crimes you are being ordered to commit are
actually going to protect your loved ones at home from
whatever theoretical threat is being waved in your face. What
you can be sure your crimes will do - up to the point where
someone starts WWII - is to fatten several national leaders'
Swiss bank accounts, generate enormous profits for the arms
industry in all the countries involved (the same companies in
Europe sold weapons to all sides in both World Wars, and are
still doing it today), get rid of a lot of surplus teenage
males (always a threat to the inner stability of any culture),
and thoroughly mix the gene pools of the survivors.
   None of these results, except the last, is one that the
average Neopagan approves of, and there are plenty of ethical
(and much more pleasant) ways to mix genes. So I'm forced to
repeat my earlier conclusions. Despite all the traditional
arguments about "just wars" and "national defense" and making
the world safe for democracy/capitalism/communisim, etc, a
soldier, sailor, marine, or airfighter in a modern superpower
armed forces organization is holding down a job where he/she
has agreed to commit acts of a grossly unethical and immoral
nature whenever he/she is ordered to commit them, for reasons
that will usually be equally unethical and immoral. That makes
superpower military service (and that in many smaller nations)
a "wrong livelihood" for a Neopagan. Period.
   What about other forms of "serving your country?" If the
goverment decides that all citizens must spend a year or two
working as firefighters, or conservation corpsmembers, or
hospital workers or street pavers, etc., then such service
may be perfectly ethical and moral. An argument can even be
made that such community service is a genuine moral obligation
(nobody, except absolute Libertarians, likes parasites very
much). However, if such service becomes "alternative service,"
meaning that you are filling a job position so that someone
else can go commit crimes in your place, then you haven't
escaped the ethical and moral issues, however worthy the service
you are performing might be.
   I'd like to emphasise that I am not saying that Neopagans in
the military are "bad people" or "lousy excuses for Pagans."
Many very good people join the military for reasons that have
little to do with wanting to kill. They join to get job training
(although they often get cehated in this area), to earn tuition
to pay for college later, to travel around the world (..."visit
exotic places, meet fascinating people, and kill them"), or
because they genuinely believe that they will be helping to
"defend their country" by becoming part of the military machine.
If you grow up believing everything that the goverment and the
mass media tells you, this sort of innocence is understandable.
What I am saying is that Neopagans now in the military, or
contemplating being there, should think long and hard about all
the issues and arguments, official and unofficial, overt and
covert, genuine and fraudulent, before they decide to stay or
joiin.
   Now about those Pagan cops: As I see it, the major
polytheological point in evaluating the morality and ethicality
of law enforcement has to do with the nature of the laws that
are being enforced. A discussion in the field of criminology:
"Crimes with victims" and "crimes without victims". The former
are the obvious ones: murder, rape, arson, theft, fraud, most
traffic laws, etc. and some subtler ones such as bribery, graft,
etc. The latter are activities in which there either is no
victim at all or in which the primary "victim" is the criminal:
the vast majority of sex, drug, and gambling crimes fall under
this classification. In essance, Judeo-Christian preachers who
have been unable to convince their congregations to stop "sinning"
have used their political power to get the civil goverments to
declare various sins to be "crimes".
   It seems clear to me that no culture can survive for long
if it allows crimes with victims to take place without efforts
to prevent the crimes and/or punish the criminals. It seems
equally clear that the legal creation of "crimes without victims"
is a complete violation of the principle of seperation of church
and state, but such is not unusual. A Neopagan cop who is
devoting his/her career to working on a homocide squad, or
investigating arson, or solving rapes etc, is behaving in a
perfectly appropriate fashion for a Neopagan. Contrarywise, if
she or he is arresting prostitutes, or busting gay couples for
sodomy, or destroying pot fields, then she/he is not acting in
keeping with Neopagan beliefs, but is instead using the force of
the civil goverment to impose Judeo-Christian (and corporate)
values on the general populance. That's not only immoral and
unethical, it's unconstitutional as well. Unfortunately, in order
to get promoted to a position where you can concentrate on
crimes-with-victims, you usually have to spend several years
enforcing victimless crimes.
   The other major sorts of crimes without victims are the
political ones. In these "crimes", generally useful laws are
reinterpeted to forbid what are supposed to be constitutionaly
protected protest activities. And this is where we get into gray
areas of interpetation. If a hundred thousand people are
marching down a street protesting a goverment policy (ie,
exercising their constitutional right to peacably assemble and
petition the goverment for a redress of their grievances), it's
immoral and unethical to attack them with billy clubs and police
dogs, even if you think their opinions stupid or ignorant. But
if someone from an ecological action group has decided to
destroy bulldozers, or sink whaling ships or dump bags of red
paint on members of a goverment commission who are neglecting
their duties to protect endangered species - then we have a
problem., Their activities are clearly illegal, and are indeed
crimes that have victims (the developers, the whalers, the
bureaucrats), yet they are being done to prevent even greater
crimes, ones that many Neopagans would also oppose. Personally
I cheered when I heard about the "eco-terrorists" who sank the
whaling vessel in Iceland, wrecked the whalers mainframe
computer and destroyed the freezing units.
   But when you become a law enforcement officer you swear an
oath to uphold the law as written. You aren't (officially)
allowed to pick and choose which laws you will enforce and
which you will ignore, although every cop I've ever known did,
in fact, pick and choose on a daily basis, simply as a matter
of necessity in big cities (where there's too much crime
going on for the police to stop all of it), and of tradition
in small towns(where the local cop or sheriff is often judge,
jury and punisher as well). However, as a law enforcement
officer, you're supposed to enforce every law as it currently
exists, no matter how unjust, stupid, immoral or ecocidal it
might be. If a Neopagan takes that oath, she or he is going to
be in spiritual trouble sooner or later.
   Yet, unlike the average member of the military, a cop
routinely acts in a genuinely heroic way. The highway patrol
keeps the crazies from killing the rest of us on the roads.
Homicide detectives try to find murderers and stop them. SWAT
teams capture or kill insane people who are shooting passersby.
Cops pull people from burning cars and buildings, rescue
drowining children, give mouth-to-mouth and CPR to collapsed
victims of heart attacks, and risk their lives every day they
go out onto big city streets.
   If we had a legal system that was sane, rational and
upheld the seperation of church and state, and a politcial
system that was not terrified of its own citizens, then the
career of law enforcement might be a completely honorable one,
all the time, for a Neopagan. As it is, Neopagan cops must
constantly be making complex ethical and moral decisions about
their own behavior as cops. If you can find a section of
your law enforcement agency where you can be exclusively
involved in solving and/or preventing genuine crimes with
victims, then you could have a long and honorable career. But
if you are a general duty officer, then sooner or later you
are going to be ordered to arrest someone you think is
harmless and innocent, simply because they've violated some
Judeo-Christian taboo. Thus, being a cop can be a right
livelihood for a Neopagan, but its a hard road to walk.
   Nonetheless, there are advantages to the Neopagan community
as a whole, in having cops around who know that Neopagans
aren't baby-killing monsters. Certainly the fundimentalist
cops are working real hard to convince the rest of their
collegues that Neopagans are no different from the Satanists
who are committing atrocities. Having some knowledgeable
members of our community be also part of the law enforcement
community can only improve communications between all of us.

   Having said all these negative things about soldiers and
cops, just what sorts if warriors DO I approve of? Well it
should be obvious from my earlier remarks that I believe
that martial artists are worthy of admiration, as are
spir5tual warriors in the Native American style (though that
phrase, like "shaman" has been badly abused by New Agers and
Neopagans alike). I also approve of earth Warriors or
"ecoguerillas", such as the members of Earth First! and the
Sea Shephard Soceity, who are willing to risk their own lives
to protect our Mother. I think that private citizens who
fight for freedom and our constitutional rights, through
such groups as Common Cause, People for the America Way, the
American Civil Liberties Union, etc. are warriors worthy
of our admiration.
   What all these warriors have in common, and what I think
is fully in keeping with the warrior ideals of our Paleopagan
ancestors, is a belief that process is as important as results.
To a martial artist a dishonorable victory is not a victory.
Ecoguerillas try very hard to avoid endangering human and
animal life while they are destroying machinery. The legal
action groups mentioned use constitutional means to defend
the constitution, even though they know that their enemies
will not.
   And let us not forget the herosim of many people who do
not think of themselves as warriors. The woman who pulls a
plaow because her children are hungry and the horse died, is
a hero. The man who stays awake night after night nursing a
sick child, is a hero. The nonviolent activist who lays her
body down in front of a bulldozer or a truck carrying toxic
waste, is a hero. The antinuclear protestor who is willing
to go to jail for his or her beliefs, such as Starhawk, is a
hero. And they are all, in their own ways, warriors that we
can be proud of.
   A genuine warrior confronts her or his enemy as another
human being, not as a faceless stranger or a nonhuman "thing".
A genuine warrior is willing to risk his or her own life, job,
reputation, family relationships, and more, to fight for what
he or she believes is morally and ethically right. A genuine
warrior knows that her or his greatest challenge is internal,
rather than external.
   If any of us wish to call ourselves "Warriors for the
Gods" or "Defenders of Our Mother", then we must be willing
to pledge "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" to
the causes we claim to believe in. Anything less may be good
on its own merits, but is not true heroism.
   Thor, Indra, Athena, and Kali are not impressed by fancy
costumes, expensive weapons, or self serving excuses. They
are the ones who will judge whether someone is really a Neopagan
warrior or a blowhard - not me, not ADF, and not the Neopagan
Community. So if we are going to have warrior cults within
ADF, the organizers are going to have to have their acts
together. Each of them should select a cause with which most
Neopagans can agree, then train themselves to fight for it
effectively (not just romantically - but thats another whole
essay), and begin the process of fighting. Just sitting
around drinking beer and swapping war stories/myths is not
going ti be enough to gain them any respect or support from
the rest of us. Putting their bodies on the line for Our
Mother will.