“The violence of the state, to be justified, must be transubstantiated in its essence into peaceful incantation, yet at the same time, to be effective, it must retain the external accidents of violence.”
"Equality: the Unknown Ideal" (2001)
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Roderick Long 11
American philosopher 1964Related quotes
“Perhaps justified violence is better than peace at any price.”
The Uncertain Midnight (1958)
“The state, conceived in violence, and backed by violence, will never achieve true peace.”
Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire (1996), p. 202
Context: The Biblical view of the law, the courts, and the state is profoundly radical. The Bible looks upon the state as a kind of rebellious artifice; it is spurious, a human creation in rebellion against God.
In the Old Testament, when the first state is proposed in the person of Saul, the first King of Israel, God tells the prophet Samuel that this project spells rejection of God. The state and its legislature are in rebellion against, or rejection of, God. Its courts are a human fabrication, cannot promote justice and peace; they are founded in violence, and legalize violence.
The state holds together through police power, against the citizenry.
The state, conceived in violence, and backed by violence, will never achieve true peace.

Letter to Lyudmila Shestakova, July 30, 1868; Jay Leyda and Sergei Bertensson The Musorgsky Reader (1947) p. 113.

“Libertarianism, Violence within States, and the Polarity Principle,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Jul., 1984), pp. 443-462. Published by Comparative Politics, Ph.D. Programs in Political Science, City University of New York. https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DP84.HTM

“Libertarianism and International Violence”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 27, Sage Publications, March 1, 1983, p. 27-71 https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DP83.HTM

Speech on the October Crisis (October 1970), quoted in Louis, Fournier, F.L.Q: The Anatomy of an Underground movement (Toronto: NC Press Limited, 1984), p. 256
1970s

AEDIDH Consultation 16. May 2011 http://www.alfreddezayas.com/Lectures/right%20to%20peace.shtml : The United Nations Human Rights to Peace Consultation.

2005 February 17 - In a debate with DNC Chairman Howard Dean at Pacific University