Years ago, I came across the phrase "The first to take offense is usually the first to offend", and it's proved to be a truism in the Religion Forum. What group repeatedly and openly slanders fellow Christians with the epithet "anti-XXXX bigots" and "heretics", attempts to whip up a pogrom to have these "bigots" and their views removed from FR, attempts to have the forum staff removed and replaced with those sympathetic to these insults, and then (with a straight face) claims that they're the ones being persecuted against?
A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea- he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility...
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Perfect quote!
Kudos!