Post

What gifts hath Fate for all her chivalry? Even such as hearts heroic oftenest win; Honour, a friend, anguish, untimely death. Not sure I entirely agree with Homer. Anguish, yes, but we will endure. Not because we believe in an inevitably better future, but because we believe in living a better us.

The question of how we should respond to ethno-fascism is no different to the question of how an agnostic should respond to questions of ethics.

As Hillel the Elder posited, what the devout can learn from the moral behaviour of an agnostic is that if the only reason you behave ethically is out of fear of the retribution of a deity, then you’re probably not a very moral person.

It’s plain that Trump and his millions of supporters have no fear of whatever deities they claim to believe in. If the only reason they never expressed violent bigotry was their fear of consequence, no amount of compromise was ever going to change their minds.