The main distortion of the Official View of the Whiskey Rebellion was its alleged confinement to four counties of western Pennsylvania. From recent research, we now know that no one paid the tax on whiskey throughout the American "back-country": that is, the frontier areas of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and the entire state of Kentucky.
President Washington and Secretary Hamilton chose to make a fuss about Western Pennsylvania precisely because in that region there was cadre of wealthy officials who were willing to collect taxes. Such a cadre did not even exist in the other areas of the American frontier; there was no fuss or violence against tax collectors in Kentucky and the rest of the back-country because there was no one willing to be a tax collector.
The whiskey tax was particularly hated in the back-country because whisky production and distilling were widespread; whiskey was not only a home product for most farmers, it was often used as a money, as a medium of exchange for transactions. Furthermore, in keeping with Hamilton's program, the tax bore more heavily on the smaller distilleries. As a result, many large distilleries supported the tax as a means of crippling their smaller and more numerous competitors.
And you are incapable of seeing the difference between passive resistance and active rebellion? There was no rebellion outside western Pennsylvania as I said. Apparently there was a greater ability in the other areas to hold one's liquor than exhibited in Penn and therefore the cranks were not able to agitate violence.
Of course, your quote gets the sequence all wrong. The violence in Pa. caused the fedgov to move to protect its officers. It did not "chose to make a fuss" but RESPONDED to that fuss.
Nor is there a coherent argument against the tax in the list of dubious complaints about it.
The Rebellion did have a positive effect since it showed that the fedgov would not back down to violence and would back up the law rather than surrender to the lawless. Its negative effect was that it allowed the Jeffersonians to agitate and distort reality to attract enough of the gullible to attain power. No wonder it appeals to you.