I can still identify with them because I have known what it feels like to be all those things. What I cannot identify with any more is the self-pity that goes with it. There is nothing laudable about being a victim. I suppose that life deals us certain cards to play. We may go through really bad times, be full of sorrow or just plain depressed, but that is our battlefield, that is where we must make our stand.
General good is the plea of the scoundrel, the hypocrite and the liar.
The idea that heaven on earth is possible through the implementation of a political ideal is one of the most destructive ideas we have ever played with. In seeking to regulate the affairs of man there is still no better point of departure than the Old Testament view that we are creatures who have fallen from grace. I have only to spend a day in front of a television screen anywhere in the world to rediscover that man is a barbarian, and that civilized behaviour is the exception and not the norm. Any ideology that fails to take account of this fact is doomed only to perpetuate the barbarism. And I suppose that is why I can't sing this next song any more, not because it is a bad song, or factually untrue, but because it began to inspire a certain feeling of self-righteousness in me when I sang it, especially when singing to the converted.