“…under sharp and extreme circumstances everyone is a ‘conservative’; but when luxury allows we can afford to be ‘liberal’.”

Beyond the level of aesthetics I think ideas of good and evil are rooted in what promotes the survival of society, on the one hand, and what threatens it on the other. The more insulated we become from existential dangers, the more tolerant we become of evil acts. The fundamentally important linkage between behavior and consequences is broken.

I have come to believe that the genius of our Founders rested on the recognition that human nature — the good and the bad of it — is a constant; that man is not perfectible. The best we can do is to organize ourselves in such a way that our best instincts are rewarded and our worst contained.

In the matter of rehabilitation we all regularly err, and most of us regularly find redemption. But under the sinister tail of the curve, redemption may not be possible.