Taxation is particpating in a war. I knew several people who protested Viet Nam by refusing to pay taxes. Refusal to pay taxes will land you in jail. Without the money from appropriations, no war could be waged.
Holding stocks in munitions companies is a more affirmative way to waging war. I find those who sit at home and reap war profits far more reprehensible than a hapless combatant in the war.
Of course, to pass any judgment, the details must be clearer. If the war use is a very small percentage of the company's business activities, it is not so bad.
If the Witnesses did not stress their neutrality so much, I'd say that's life. It is reality. When you preach and publicize your neutrality, you open yourself to people taking umbrage with your deceit. John Edward's adultery had gigantic implications. If he had been the Democratic nominee, the Dems would have lost. It was precisely his pandering with his marriage and setting up Elizabeth as earth mother to gain the women's vote that made his infideltiy so notable. Larry Craig in the bathroom would not have such a big deal if he did not go out of his way to vehemently deny gay people rights. So the Witnesses purchasing stocks is cause for concern.
Unlike large corporations, we will see no raucous shareholders' meetings where a group confronts the purchase of stock for social or Biblical reasons. My mom always said we were poor b/c my father served at Bethel and that he was not a vet so he did not get veterans' preference. Compared to men who lost their lives and souls in live theatres, his pioneering never cut it for me. Again, pioneer hours tracked the U.S. statutes and regulations for draft exemption. What a coincide. I don't see neutrality in that.
Recently, I was minding my own business researching a law journal dealing with civil rights. I was shocked to see an article published about the WTBTS and Japan before and during WWII. It would have been a riveting read to read accounts of individual witnesses clinging to neutrality. Not a single Witness human was mentioned. It was all about the WTBTS. I wanted to vomit. The WTBTS may have lost some property but individual Witnesses lost their lives or were imprisoned. It is a story worth celebrating. I wrote my first note to a law review author asking how as a female she could be a lawyer. Her very act of sitting in Brooklyn, using Lexis, and writing about the WTBTS contrasts with the stories of Japanese witnesses. I never received a reply.
