violence

Is violence ever a good idea?

I want to say no. That is the answer that I really wish was true, and the one that I would say casually, but when carefully considering the realities of the question, I think that in some cases violence is not necessary, but the best option. Violence can be used in an innumerable amount of awful ways, in fact in almost all situations violence should be avoided, but there are some occasions when it must be used. If violence had never occurred, if the original act of violence had never happened, then violence would never be a good idea. The problem with this is that the initial act of it happened, and that led to the continuous revenge of some people against other people. To instigate violence is never a good idea, ever. To be the person to start violence for no previous reason, just because, will never be a good idea. However, when someone like Hitler starts to be violent, and not just violent but maliciously cruel to certain groups of people, I feel that the only good idea (that will work) is to be violent back. There are other good theoretical ideas, but when applied to reality I do not think they would match against people like Hitler. Some people don’t respond to what the rest of the world believes a sane human being would respond to, and so in these cases, the only way to fight the violence is with more violence. This seems like it is not helping the problem but creating more of it, and that might be true, but in the moment, people are dying, and the only way to stop that is to stop the people who are killing them. This does, in turn, probably lead to more violence, but if nobody had stood up to Hitler, if the world had said, “we will non-violently protest your atrocities”, he would be ruling the entire world with an iron fist right now. Sometimes violence is a good idea, and that is usually an indicator of how bad the situation is.