> we have to accept that no one committing violence (either defending or attacking the capital) is morally clean in the entire situation, and that everyones arg

> we have to accept that no one committing violence (either defending or attacking the capital) is morally clean in the entire situation, and that everyones argument for committing violence needs to be understood and judged There's a certain place here where we see this the same way and are just positioning our definition of sin/moral culpability on opposite sides of this judgement. Was the sin justified by the argument, or does the justness of the argument make it not a sin? > If the solution to killing is killing, we will never solve the problem. This bit, though, is still fuzzy to me. My lens is a bit different in terms of "responding to the situation" a bit narrower than "solving the problem"? Possibly some residual Christianity at play, believing that "solving the problem" is incompatible with human nature. But similarly I'm generally sympathetic to the "just following orders" claim especially when you extend it to the "I'm just a member of society, not in the chain of command at all", and so would find it hard to support a post-Civil-War action of "throw every white Southerner in jail for the rest of their lives"... even though I also think the ultimate retreat of the US federal government in the face of ongoing southern insurgency caused a LOT of future evils.