The dark side of the righteous mind
By Mike Moore
Nov 24, 2015
A hundred years ago on Thanksgiving evening, an alcoholic ex-Methodist minister, William Joseph “Doc” Simmons, climbed Stone Mountain with 15 male colleagues ... He and his men built an altar of 16 stones at the summit and laid an American flag and a Bible on it. In the middle was a 16-foot wooden cross that Simmons had set up that morning. He set the cross aflame ... Simmons summarized the beliefs of the reborn Klan as adherence to the “Tenets of the Christian Religion. White Supremacy. Protection of our Pure American Womanhood. Preventing unwarranted strikes by Foreign Labor Agitators. Upholding the Constitution of the United States of America. The Sovereignty of State Rights. Promotion of Pure Americanism ...” In reality, its mission was mainly the intimidation and persecution of Jews, Catholics, recent immigrants not of “Aryan” descent, and of course, African-Americans ...
The Founders were pretty righteous about the principle of self-government. We can be thankful for that. Righteous in a good cause is great ... But the Righteous Mind — in its most extreme form — is often dangerous, particularly to the American Idea of openness and tolerance. It is useful to recall that at the Thanksgiving table.
http://www.gvnews.com/opinion/editorial-the-dark-side-of-the-righteous-mind/article_924c6924-9314-11e5-befe-1704c5be4a7e.html
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