We must not despair.

Desperate people, as has so often happened, take desperate, unreasonable positions. There are, for example, many hate groups in the United States. They are organized around the fear and hatred of another group, or groups, of people. Familiar hatred objects are gay people, Jews, Catholics, emigres, black people, religionists of other persuasions, intellectuals and others. The trick is to survive the evil that these haters do and curb it if we can WITHOUT acting in illegal, unreasonable ways ourselves. That's what the Bush government did when it resorted to torture and denial of reasonable legal process. In their zeal, they turned their backs on our basic values. The point is that we must not despair and do what the haters do.