  Walzer’s two quotes stress significantly different values that he has a tendency to conflate. The first is that of life itself for all members of the community, the second that of the continuity of a “way of life”. Survival is at issue in both cases but the significance and weight that each survival should have is surely very different. The prospect of universal massacre understandably puts stress upon anything constraining the scope of actions to prevent it, but the prospect of forced alterations, set-backs or radical changes to a way of life must be less threatening. Even a relatively benign foreign occupation may involve extensive and very regrettable changes to the way of life of the occupied community perhaps in the form of restrictions on traditional freedoms, such as those of political speech or religious expression, and a degraded position of citizenship vis-a-vis the occupiers. Yet throughout history modified life styles have evolved for such communities that make for the possibility of at least coping and even some flourishing. It is not at all obvious that slaughtering innocent people is justified in order to avoid such an outcome, or even outcomes notably worse on the same scale.