Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Wade Riddick <wriddick AT usa.net>]

>Nice to "hear" from you Wade. Nice evisceration of Rand Paul!
>
>When I was an undergrad I had a great history professor for a class on the
>Holocaust. I don't remember his name now, as it's faded along with lots of
>other things, into the murkiness of the past. However, I will never forget
>a point he emphasized: if society goes too far right or too far left, it
>ends in the same place--with thugs in jackboots.
>

Walter Dean Burnham taught me that the ideological spectrum is a bracelet.
Both ends are closer to each other than the middle (and I think it's this
self-righteousness).  Hitler and Stalin both had death camps, both had
secret police, both pretended to be democrats and had a civil religion of
unquestioned authority.

The opposite of a psychopath isn't a psychopath with a different agenda;
it's someone with a conscious.

It's like the old love/hate problem in seminars.  It takes a while to get
through to students that love and hate are closely related and only apathy
is their opposite.