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Serious question: at what point is political violence justified? At what point is it defensible to take up arms in defense of one's community? I know we're all ostensibly against violent remedies, but at some point, practical and moral concerns ought to overtake an abstract commitment to the rule of law, yes?
Look at the Catholic just war doctrine, kind of a checklist of criteria violent action must satisfy to be right in the eyes of God: is there a competent authority organizing the armed action? A realistic possibility of success? A just cause for which you're fighting? And is it your last resort?
If so, then one is justified in extraordinary and violent action. The left seems to believe the situation is sufficiently dire as to justify violence. Is there sufficient cause for resisting them on their own terms?
If not, why? So as to not to break the state's monopoly on violence? To reap the civilizational benefits of settling disputes with words not weapons? After exactly how many presses of the "defect" button do you, too, press "defect"?
And after what point does insisting that people who've experienced "defect" after "defect" continue to play "cooperate" become itself a form of evil, of gaslighting, of denying people their fundamental dignity?
I'm not sure about the answers to any of these questions, but as I see parts of the Internet seething and roiling, and as I see other parts of the Internet gloating, and as I see it all spill over to real life --- the DNA lounge in San Francisco has a "neck shot" special tonight --- I have to wonder whether we're at one of those points in history at which it is less moral to follow man's law than to uphold God's law.
The Catholic church has an explicit social teaching on this. From Catechism 2243:
Traditional leftist revolutionary violence has run afoul of 3 and 4 at least. Likewise, so would any right reactionaries eyeing violence, even in a truly horrible situation like South Africa. I would say Francisco Franco was in the clear, probably.
You are right to bring up just war theory. The throughline of all Catholic teaching on "When am I allowed to harm?" is the double effect. You are not allowed to do anything that is intrinsically evil (which, contrary to mischaracterizations of Matthew 5:39, violence is not). You must not desire the evil outcomes (so no wanting to hurt enemies for the sake of hurting them). Evil outcomes must not directly cause the good desired end (so no terrorist killing of civilians, even if that helps lead to victory). And there must be a proportionate cause (so no rebelling over the government failing to fix that nasty pothole).
In some ways, this is a hard teaching for many people, but the Christian POV on violence is not as alien from intuitive morality as is often suggested.
Where the Christian POV is alien is that rebellion against an authority you're born under is truly the last resort. God put you under a prince, even an evil prince, as part of his active or at least permissive will. 'Consent of the governed' is nonsense. Does a child get to choose whether to obey his father? No. There may be extreme situations where a child must run away or even fight his father, but that requires extreme justification. David stays loyal to the evil king Saul, simply running when Saul tries to kill him. Jesus meekly submits himself to be executed by Pilate.
Considering it was literally a declared crusade…
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