The virtue we should cherish most is the courage to resist violence

From Enemies of Society by Paul Johnson.

The Ten Pillars of our Civilization:

It follows from this that certain acts are intrinsically, always and everywhere wrong. Murder is always wrong. Thus anyone who tries to justify political violence, the greatest single evil of our age, must automatically be suspect as an enemy of our society. In fact the theories which attempt to legitimize killing in the pursuit of political objectives are, without exception, founded on false premises, illogical or rest on deliberate linguistic conjuring. Hence there is a natural presumption that anyone seeking to circumvent the common opinion that violence is wicked is an intellectual crook; as John Ralwe put it in A Theory of Justice: 'On a subject as ancient and much discussed... we may probably assume that a novel, and hence interesting, view of violence is likely to be false.' Moreover, a propagandist or pedagogue who is wrong about violence is almost certainly wrong about all his other claims to truth. The virtue we should cherish most is the courage to resist violence, especially if this involves flying in the face of public opinion which, in its fear, and in its anxiety for peace, is willing to appease the violators. Above all, violence should never be allowed to pay, or be seen to pay.