At the same time, there are certain salient principles, valid always but of special relevance today, which we should take particular care to uphold. The first, and perhaps the most important, is to reassert our belief in moral absolutes. It is not true that all codes of human conduct are relative, and reflect cultural assumptions and economic arrangements which do not necessarily possess any authority. It is not true that there is no such thing as absolute right, and absolute wrong. It is not true that our behavior is wholly determined by environment.
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. 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. The third moral axiom is that democracy is the least evil, and on the whole the most effective, from of government.