"We are injured, but shrink from response; we are insulted, but the reply sticks in our throat. We must choose between two manifestly imperfect candidates, and we refuse this choice, unaware that we ought not merely to vote for the less imperfect, but also to stump for him. We see the greater part of the world polluted by rats and flies, by ideological piracies so ravenous and cynical that they barely deserve the name politics; yet we hang back, wary of the disaster, guilt or humiliation which may result from moral action. We are victims of our own virtue, which is better at shunning evil than it is at doing good; of liberal virtue, which espouses a tolerance so radical that it encourages the enemies of liberty and tolerance. The vice of these virtues is delay — endless debates and miscellaneous adjustments whose sole psychological purpose is to obscure the simple necessity for action. And the armour of this vice is a conspiracy of self-righteousness so ironclad as to stifle controversy. Devastating reversals, due in large part to our own impotence, are seen as tests of integrity, successfully passed. Waist-deep in rubble, we praise each other's fairness and forbearance. Our frustrated outrage, largely withheld from our enemies, is heaped on those few compatriots who have the impudence to suggest positive action in self-defence. Justly so perhaps: the enemy merely exploits us, but these scoundrels insult our morality."
from time and the art of living, by robert grudin.
2010 rob purdie.