Tom Walls' buddies remain an isolated minority, except during times of economic or social stress, when a mass following develops to blame cranky sociopaths for the problems besetting society. If it weren't for brown-nosing evil firebrands, he would have no friends. The ideas backing up his rejoinders are extremely superficial and sex-crazed.

For generations, even many otherwise decent white Southerners learned to despise black people.

From George Washington to George W. Bush, presidents have invoked God's name in the performance of their official duties.

Journalists are supposed to be skeptical, that's what keeps them digging rather than simply accepting the official line, whether it comes from government or corporate bureaucrats.

The United Nations was founded in the aftermath of World War II, just as the world was beginning to learn the full horrors of history's worst genocide, the Holocaust that consumed 6 million Jews and 3 million others in Europe.

The United Nations has become a largely irrelevant, if not positively destructive institution, and the just-released U.N. report on the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, proves the point.

Their prejudice allowed white Southerners to look the other way when blacks were denied their most basic human rights, and it encouraged the worst of them to engage in unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence.