Neo-Quakerism

Its not pathological altruism, it is simply Neo-Quakerism

The Borderlanders occupied Indian lands without paying for them, launched pre-emptive attacks on Indian villages, and pushed generally peaceful tribes into alliances with New France, who provided them guns and ammunition with which to attack their British rivals during the 18^thcentury’s many imperial wars. The dysfunctional Quaker government, secure behind concentric wings of German and Scots-Irish settlements, made no effort to respond to the mounting crisis except to send the Indians gifts and supplies. Even when French mercenaries sailed into Delaware bay and began sacking plantations a few miles from Philadelphia, the government refused to consider any defense preparations. Benjamin Franklin, a Boston Yankee who relocated to Philadelphia, railed at the Friends for their complacency. “To refuse defending one’s self or one’s country is so unusual a thing among mankind that… [our enemies] may not believe it,” he wrote in 1747, “Until by experience, they can come higher and higher up our river, seize our vessels and plunder our plantations and villages and retire with their booty unmolested.” The Quakers, steadfast in their pacifism, ignored Franklin, leaving him to raise private donations to organize the colony’s defense. 

Things came to a head in 1755 when the Lenni Lenape Indians launched a full-on assault against the Scots-Irish and German settlements in the western part of the colony, wiping out entire towns and massacring or taking prisoner hundreds of settlers. Thousands of survivors fled eastward, some going all the way to Philadelphia to demonstrate before the impotent assembly. Residents from the previously peaceful German settlements in Lancaster county suddenly found themselves living in a war zone, but without arms or ammunition with which to defend themselves. As refugees choked the capitol, Quaker politicians refused to endorse military appropriations. One leading Quaker, Daniel Stanton, wrote in his diary that the fact that few Friends had been killed in the fighting indicated that God approved of their inaction. Few non-Quakers endorsed Stanton’s analysis, noting that the Friends’ lack of casualties had more to do with the fact that they were clustered in the safest corner of the province. Even London Quakers were appalled. “You owe the people protection and yet withhold them from protecting themselves,” an influential Friend there wrote his co-religionists in Philadelphia. “Will not all the blood that is spilt lie at your doors?” Forced to choose between defending their society and upholding their religious principles, key Quaker officials resigned from office. The Friends would never again monopolize political affairs in the Midlands. 

-excerpted from American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodward (2012)