Human beings are complicated creatures, I thought, looking out over the still, dark waters of the lake. We have the ability to hold two perfectly contradictory ideas at the same time, with untroubled consciences. Take the slave owners and their accomplices. They inflicted unimaginable horrors on their fellow man, and blithely went to church on Sunday like good, pious men. Those same slaves had been freed by the North’s victory in the war, and yet the highest court in the land refused to enforce the Civil Rights Act, explicitly placing its stamp of approval on racial discrimination.
