When Evil Masquerades as Good

Here is Morris Dees, one of the founding fathers of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Interesting face, is it not? Study it closely. Very closely. Note the squint of the eye and the twist of the mouth. Note also the folded-arms body language.

Is it only my imagination, or does Morris Dees appear to be gazing off into the distance in search of something to hate?

Or then again, perhaps he has just spotted somebody whom he would like to see arrested?

Oh very well. He looks like a guard at Dachau who has just noticed a Jew who isn't working hard enough.

It is not a pleasant face. Not pleasant at all. Mr. Dees looks like a self-righteous pit-viper, doesn't he? A venomous Tartuffe, wouldn't you say?

Just the sort of chap who would lasso the S.A.V.E. organization and the False Rape Society, and brand them as hate groups, and herd them into the same corral with Mark Lepine and George Sodini.

Mind you, not that he personally authored the SPLC articles in question. But the material was published on his watch. And so I hold him accountable. Along with his fellow honcho, Richard Cohen.

All right. So what does the current debacle tell us about the Southern Poverty Law Center? I would say, that it tells us very shoddy things indeed. And it ought to convey a more general object lesson as well. It ought to demonstrate that a mission statement full of angelic rhetoric doesn't mean shit. Any more than the flatulent words of politicians. Such rhetoric is a mask, and here we see the face directly underneath it.

It ought to be an elementary lesson, instilled into every child in grammar school, that anti-fascism is the deadliest form of "fascism" on all of planet Earth.