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I remember how it was, and I have no question why he was necessary.

He was necessary because people who knew better remained on the sidelines. Few people like to be rejected by their peers, and to speak up, in some places and times, was to be ostracized, and intimidated. Threatened, even. So people put their heads down, and hope for better days.

The poisonous spirit to which you refer is rooted in two things: one, the caustic effects of a bad conscience that hasn't healed, and secondly, economic self-interest wrongly understood.

Most people, when they realize they have wronged someone, change directions, and then make peace with it, and move on. Some people harden themselves into a knot, and are driven to prove themselves right in the face of all logic, if it takes another century.

Much of what we love in American political culture comes out of AngloSaxon culture, the old self reliance, John Locke, Adam Smith, all of that. But that isn't the only thing that came over; the royalists, and their twisted sense of entitlement also came over. Their moral relativism, and the accompanying hostility to moral absolutes when applied to themselves and their affairs.

In the modern world, we call them Democrats, socialists, people who believe there is a natural order, in which some people must lead, and others must be cared for. Its medieval, really, although they tend to see themselves as noble, as cutting edge, as salt-of-the-earth.

We have fought them again and again, in various guises. I guess they never really go away.

One thing I have found is that conservatives, in the sense of John Locke classic liberalism, often use words which mean one thing, and our adversaries use the same terms, but with another added meaning which justifies their peculiar perversion. It occasionally happens when you get into a conversation with these people that you think you are saying the same things, and suddenly, there comes a moment that raises your hair straight up, in which you realize that you are most definitely "not" on the same page.

And here is the thing. We don't want to be on the same page. There are racialists on the left and on the right, just as there are socialists of the left and the right varieties. If you believe in liberty, you are not on that continuum. It is a mistake to get drawn into left-right arguments; thats not who we are. We believe in color blind citizenship. Thats it. A soul has no color; before God we are "neither Greek nor Jew". If someone doesn't believe that, whether they are on the left or the right, then we have no communion with them.