Cognitive dissonance

[ginamariewade]

I was watching a program about the history of the KKK on the history channel at 3 in the morning one day last week. There was a segment that showed one of their pervertedly religious cross burning ceremonies, and at the end of it, this guy started playing Amazing Grace on the bagpipes

Comments

[wlotus]

Apparently they do not. Most religious extremists do not know the history of the things they hold dear.

[ruakh]

If Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech can be taken as an argument against affirmative action, then all bets are off. Plant dead trees for living, and we'll make them say whatever we want.

(Also, for the record - the poet wrote Amazing Grace well after he left the slave trade, and after he became Christian, but somewhat before he started campaigning for abolition. There isn't compelling evidence that Amazing Grace was really intended as abolitionist. So although we tend to think of Amazing Grace as relating to abolition, the connection is a bit indirect.)

[ginamariewade]

But he wrote it about leaving the slave trade, that is the salient aspect.

[ruakh]

But I don't know that he did. Nothing in the poem makes that clear; and it's not even so clear that his religious convictions are really what brought him to leave the slave trade. I mean, that's a valid interpretation - and certainly the most popular one - but it's not the only one.

[niyabinghi]

Intelligence clearly is not a requirement for being a member of the KKK.

[msolursh]

I guess they really do have pointy little heads under those hoods.