Crispin Sartwell hits the nail on the head with this short piece on the recent public debates about immigration and gay marriage. As he says:
[I]f history teaches us anything, it's that, though bigotries come and go, bigotry never dies. At the moment of a particular prejudice's ascendancy, there are a thousand seemingly plausible causes or justifications for the hatred in one's heart, and a thousand ways to convince yourself that your hatred is righteousness, truth or even love. Segregation, exclusion, exploitation and denunciation never appear as evil in the moment of their lurid bloom as they do in retrospect. When our grandchildren look back at this era, they will be shocked by our explicit violation of our professed values. They will see our hypocrisy with perfect clarity, as we see clearly the injustice of racial apartheid or laws prohibiting women from voting.
Those of us who are willing to look already see the writing on the wall. Unfortunately, our warnings too often fall on deaf and dumb ears these days--just as they did with Cassandra before us.
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