The Grass Ain't Greener Nowheres!

Even if it's homegrown, ahem, grass in the backwoods of North Carolina.

I hate to disappoint, but this is not a post about marijuana. But the willingness of the true blue Americans from Eric Rudolph's 'hood to defend him jingoistically reaffirms my belief that people are basically evil, and our sense of loyalty and pride is much stronger than our sense of right and wrong. Americans enjoy the idea that while the rest of the world has genocidal wars and terrorism, we're really civilized and above it all. But really this is no different, if you take an unsophisticated corner of the U.S.

The one thing we the sophisticated are good at is explaining things, and avoiding blame. In that sense, yes we're less blunt and honest in our support of extreme causes. But even Brookline liberals break down pretty quickly when you figure out who they really dislike. We modern sophists deceive ourselves pretty easily into thinking that we are civilized, that we have arrived, that thousands of years of human society were all unjust and violent, but we few, we happy few, have the secret of tolerance, pluralism and all the wonderful blessings of our liberal civilization!

Fact is, we're no different. We've just got a more inscrutable value system. Abortion, anyone?