The Civilized and the Damned
The massacre proved Voltaire’s observation — “those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
.. Sadly, it’s been done before, when a ship full of Jews fleeing certain death at the hands of the Nazis was turned away off the Florida coast in 1939, a move that reflected polls that most Americans wanted to keep them out.
.. A great crisis can act as a valuable filter, a winnowing that separates true leaders from all the rest, the courageous from the cowards.