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Notes -
This is a truly terrible survey question.
(The entire statement, which is a little better with the context, is "because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country")
This plainly includes e.g. fighting off a Chinese invasion. There might not be a Chinese invasion -- there almost certainly won't, at least of the mainland US -- but the question says 'may.' And if there were, it would likely be 'because things have gotten so far off track' in terms of foreign policy, military readiness, etc. It also includes joining the FBI to fight domestic terrorists, or the secret service to protect leaders from assassination, and a dozen other anodyne activities. I'd go so far to say that answering 'no' implies only a profoundly lacking imagination. (Or perhaps the belief that individuals resorting to violence to save our country aren't necessarily true American patriots?)
But, as you say, the actual answers are probably all signaling. Still, I'm forced to question the motives of whoever wrote that question -- did they really not think at all about what they were asking?
@remzem's YouGov poll is... slightly better?
I'd still say war counts -- it is, after all, the continuation of politics with other means -- but I'd feel like a pedant doing it. It's obvious what this one means where on the other I think I would just go down that line of thought and click 'yes.'
Still, the answer to this one is also obviously 'yes.' '[E]ver justified' is doing a lot of work. Do 83% of conservative believe the American Revolution wasn't justified? Do 55% of the very liberal think the July 20 plot to kill Hitler wasn't justified?
A far, far more useful question would be whether political violence is currently justified in America. Certainly, the numbers would be smaller, but how much smaller? Certainly not zero. Actually, it might be decent measure of how much of this is just signaling, given how much more extreme a position it is.
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