institutions can and do go bad, and private individuals can and do use force without being accountable to a responsible

institution or to validly constituted authorities. For Miceli, the criterion of relationship to values is better than the institutional criterion because the criterion of relationship to values "clarifies the limits and gives the true meaning of the previous criterions; for it subordinates and critically reveals their insufficiency ... for what prevented us from defining violence adequately previously was our failure to give its conscious relationship to value ... [f]or man, the agent of violence and force, lives in a dynamic stream of relations." (The Roots of Violence, p.48). Miceli states that "A physical act is violent, not because it is physical, but because when it is performed, it is performed through ... motive despoiled of true value. Conversely ... that which makes possible the distinction of force from violence is its relationship to true codified values. The reason why physical force - with which one defends his own life and property or that of others, with which one captures and punishes criminals - is not violence is that such acts are motivated and reside in excellent values, e.g., life, liberty, justice, charity etc." (The Roots of Violence, p.48). Miceli finds that motives and values are the key to distinguishing whether an act is violent or whether it isforceful. In short, evil men who seek to victimize and dehumanize others for selfish and ungodly reasons do violence whereas good men who seek to help and defend others for the cause of justice and truth exercise force. I find this to be a very helpful way to make the distiction between violence and force. I'd like to go back now to the case that you used in your book, a case that you considered to be, perhaps, a justified use of force against an abortionist: the man whose estranged wife was seeking an abortion. You said that "[ clases of this kind belong to a category quite separate from acts of violence done against abortionists and their facilities in the name of the abstract principle of protecting the unborn" (Anti-Abortionist at Large, p.82). You then list three reasons why they are categorically different: "first, the man believes that his unborn child is a human being; second, he disagrees with the woman's resolution to abort the child; third, he has exhausted all nonviolent means of preventing the abortion ... " (p.82). You say, "Is it not reasonable, perhaps a matter of moral obligation, to boot, for him to employ force to try to prevent the killing of his child?" (p.82). Let's take a closer look at what you have said here. The three reasons you gave for why this case is categorically different from acts of violence done against abortionists and their facilities are, in fact, virtually the same reasons that persons who would commit such acts of violence would give in order to explain the motives underlying their actions. I say virtually the same because there is only one word -- and only one word -- that would have to be changed: instead of saying "his child" we would have to say "the child". And this is most likely the only reason why you think that this case is catagorically different and, perhaps, that this is a case of justifiable violence; or, rather, a legitimate use of force by a private individual.