Honest people, mistakenly believing in the justice of their cause, are led to support injustice.
~ Elihu Root (1845-1937), U.S. Secretary of State, Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
In an excellent article, "The War at Stanford,"* Theo Baker, a sophomore at Stanford and already the recipient of a George Polk Award in Journalism, writes:
The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong. You don't have to understand what you're arguing for in order to argue for it. You don't have to be able to name the river or the sea under discussion to chant "From the river to the sea." This kind of obliviousness explains how one of my friends, a gay activist, can justify Hamas's actions, even though it would have the two of us—an outspoken queer person and a Jewish reporter—killed in a heartbeat.
As always, we have to learn again what we already know.
*Link available for 14 days.