I would like to work from this extreme toward some sort of middle. Not a compromise, but an understanding of where the line is between actions that include violence and unreasonable violent actions that are essentially fascist. I don’t know that Richard dealt with that. Maybe I can leave a comment there too, and see where that goes.
I think he did a decent job of answering the question of how far Left is too Left. It’s one that has been on my mind every since my college days, when I spent a few weeks in a summer job canvassing against the transportation of nuclear waste on our highways. It was an issue that you could discuss without saying you are anti-nuke, but most people kinda got the idea. So, one day, the young woman, who looked the part, shows up and has a plan to overthrow the government. Her logic was, Reagan isn’t going to stop proliferating, no one is, until her and people like her, who are REALLY peaceful, take over and dismantle all the bombs. And, no kidding, she said, then, they would all retire.
That’s about as “too far Left” as you can get without actually attacking the Capitol. It fits your scenario though, of a noble cause, a liberal moral reason for taking control of the situation. As it turned out, a peaceful solution was found, but one that left many weapons in silos. With slavery, there are other countries, major (historically) Christian capitalist countries, that solved the slavery problem without a Civil War.
To address that, I have to look at the resistance, the South, the ones who seceded and said they would defend any incursions into their borders and any effort to end slavery within. At that point, it becomes a moral dilemma, do you allow the suffering to go on when you are witnessing it and can do something about it and all negotiations have proven useless? The dilemma of your commitment to peaceful resolutions.
At that time I mentioned, when I was doing that canvassing, I was wrestling with just how far I would take my passivism. The war in Yugoslavia was a turning point, seeing the atrocities there and having a President that I supported in other ways and finally deciding to continue with that support, despite the sending of troops to Europe.
Anyway, rambling now. I see all this as far along the spectrum from being in a free and open space somewhere, and walking up and punching someone because they are wearing a swastika. That’s too close to terrorism for me.