People who hate all Confederates, it seems to me, are oversimplifying themselves in order to do so. They seem to be war propogandists looking for a war, relishing the division of people into abstract or stereotypical categories of Good and Evil, placing themselves among the Good–the Good, as ever in such divisions, being divested of imagination, sympathy, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and thus another version of evil. For a sound idea of what actual goodness is and how it works, there are traditions that will serve us. We don’t need a tradition to teach political hatred.
Wendell Berry, The Need To Be Whole, 234.
This hits home. It is so easy to return evil for evil.