Found This On Tumblr:

My favorite “Great Moment in Moderate History” was when Abraham Lincoln called John Brown a lunatic for trying to end the expansion of slavery through violence and then five years later ended slavery through violence.

The moral of the story is violence becomes morally acceptable the moment the powers that be approve of its use and not a moment before.

I had an angry row with my dad over John Brown (because this is what my family is) after listening to John Browns Body. His arguement was that ‘John Brown was a crazed fanatic, and he murdered people’, and my response was ‘Yeah, it would be a shame if slavery had to be abolished through violence or something. Good thing they stopped that crazy fanatic John Brown and then didn’t fight the bloodiest war in human history about it just afterwards and instead just abolished it peacefully’, to which the response was ‘No, that’s different’ - because one sort of violence upholds the state and is legitimised by it, and the other undermines it. State ideology is strong.

“if a private person should be guilty of the same things the government is doing all the time, you’d brand him a murderer, thief and scoundrel. but as long as the violence comitted is “lawful” you approve of it and submit to it.” ~Alexander Berkman

“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.”
-Max Stirner