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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragonblade" data-source="post: 446500" data-attributes="member: 2804">I must say, excellent post Celebrim!!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Now to get back on topic, I think that the two main camps on paladin thought are going to always disagree because of our view on one main point:Some of you view violence and war as inherently evil.  I, SHARK, and others do not.To me, using violence to stop evil is in fact a good act.  To not use violence when it could save the lives of many people and put an end to the reign of a dark lord is selfish and evil.To not fight for the oppressed, to turn your back on them or to engage in negotiations with tyrants while the people they oppress continue every single day to be tortured and enslaved is  disgustingly evil.  It is true that no pacifist ever started a war.  But no pacifist ever liberated a Jew in WW2 either.  Or anyone else in the history of mankind...For me, the sanctity of human life is not validated by avoiding violence in the face of oppression, rape, and enslavement.  Rather, the sanctity of human life is validated by how strongly we defend it and fight for it.If even one man is shackled and tortured in the dungeon of a dark lord, crying out in anguish, then my paladins will crusade unceasingly to free him!  Throwing themselves against the walls of the dark fortress in a ferocious seige!And if in the end, TEN MILLION people die so that one man can walk free, then so be it.  Thats what you do because that is the true value of human life.To the paladins in some of your worlds, they may view ten million deaths as too high a price to pay.  The price in blood and violence is not worth the life of one.  But that is wrong.  It is wrong to turn your back on the oppressed in the name of pacifism or because the loss of life isn't worth it.  It is wrong because the value of human life is not a commodity that can be discretely determined to have some specific value.  Lives and people are not expendable and there is nothing inherently noble about allowing oneself or others to be raped or enslaved.Now you may think this hypocritical because ten million people just died.  Well, those ten million lives weren't expendable either.  Nor were they wasted.  Remember life doesn't have some numeric one to one value.  Men are not potatoes.The Three Musketeers motto sums it up best: "All for One and One for All."By giving their lives to free and to save one of their own they have validated the value of that life and their own lives in a profound act of heroism!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />But since some of you operate from the premise that it is violence itself that is evil, well...we shall have to agree to disagree since our two views are irreconcilable. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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