Yes, it should be a last resort. But the rest failing, violence is sometimes needed. Few social progress was ever made without violent struggle. Turning the other cheek isn't an option.
You must consider that there is an equal but opposite version of you thinking this very thing. Just as implicitly convinced that if you fail to abide their way of thought in calm discussion, then there must be something wrong with you.
And then what, what about it? Say I believe in the abolition of slavery. An "equal but opposite version of me" believes that slavery should continue. No amount of talking is able to convince the other side. What do you make of it?
You're fighting a strawman, just in the same way the opposite of you would do. Just like you, your opposite will build up a straw man of you, throw together some sophistic logic to claim your very existence is a threat to society, and the next thing we know we have people shitting all over each other in a self righteous frenzy each equally and thoroughly convinced they're protecting society from its imminent destruction at the hands of the quixotic windmill turned man they're fighting.
Am I to conclude you would be against a war against slavery then? Or that there is no good or evil; me and then are the same because, well, we're both fighting each other?
I think Tango's point is not that one is right and one is wrong. I think the point is that neither side is actually listening and engaging with the other's position. Instead, it's "if you really understood my position, you would of course agree with me" - on both sides.
Note that this has nothing to do with one side being right, or with one side being morally superior. It has to do with being so certain that you don't listen.
And it's self-destructive. If you're on the anti-slavery side, you're morally right. But if you actually listen to the other side, you might be able to have a conversation where you persuade some of them. If you merely broadcast your own rightness (and the other side's wrongness, moral bankruptcy, and stupidity), you aren't going to persuade anyone. (Unfortunately, in the case of slavery, there may not be any route where you eliminate slavery without a civil war.)
But that is my point precisely. Sure, let's engage the other side. Let's make our arguments heard. Let's understand the other side and try to persuade them. I'm all for it. But failing that, what choice to we have but to resort to violence if we must (as you admit in your last sentence)?
What you do not seem to acknowledge is that your view boils down to 'my way, or violence.' And your opposite is similarly viewing things through a lens that boils down to 'my way, or violence.' It's easy to see how this is going to end... When you put this in some sort of reduction to absurdity by pretending debates are about slavery, then it masks how truly psychotic this is. In reality, people are discussing things that are far more shades of grey than black and white, but with complete mutual self righteous determination that their side of grey is actually the 'white' side.
But let's get back to even notions of black and white, right and wrong. People must be allowed to think and even argue in favor of things that are completely awful. Deciding to assault people for wrong think makes you no less wrong. The difference is in action. And again this often results in people trying to do things like invoke some sort of 'paradox of tolerance', but in reality - there is hardly such a thing. Please list an of a single society that was oppressively destroyed by an internal force that made their points relatively peacefully. That whole sentence is a a nonsequitor. It's the prime example of that sort of sophistic logic people use to convince themselves that they're protecting society from its imminent demise, and it's complete nonsense. And it's also arguably the most dangerous thing in this world. Nearly all 'evil' in this world has been done in the name of some greater good.
