“I’m—not going to tear your argument down piece-by-piece, or even try. It’s basically true. But all you’ve said, in essence, is: A wrong that has stood so long that it can’t be corrected without a lot of trouble ought to be allowed to stand.”

“Absolutely not! No, that isn’t right. When I say that I disapprove of this legislation, I mean I disapprove of it as a means of correcting the wrong. It’ll only compound it, because of the sure result; don’t you see? Look, Tom—you know as well as I do that an idealist without a plan is a dangerous person. Any half-baked neurotic can look at something he doesn’t like, even if it’s four thousand miles away, even though he knows nothing whatsoever about the factors involved, and say: ‘That’s wrong! Change it by three o’clock tomorrow!’

“Now I personally didn’t much care for the way California treated its Japanese citizens right after Pearl Harbor. You remember? But I at least had sense enough to know that maybe there were things I didn’t understand. Maybe they had reasons of their own that would have justified tossing everyone of Japanese descent into what amounts to concentration camps. Who knows? But these same California people aren’t hesitating to throw rocks at us!”

“A wrong,” Tom had said, knowing how feeble it sounded, “is a wrong, whether it’s justified or not. All crimes have got their reasons. You could carry that to ridiculous lengths and show that every murderer and every petty thief and every dictator in the world does what he does for very damn good personal reasons. Hitler probably could have given you a pretty logical explanation why he burned millions of Jews, why it was necessary to the economy and the moral health of Germany. A man who has just raped my wife could produce great psychological excuses, I’m sure. And maybe I couldn’t judge him—but I sure as hell could stop him from doing it again!”

“Aren’t you reaching a bit, old man?”

“I don’t think so. There are reasons why we brought the Negroes­ over here as slaves in the beginning, and there are reasons for the situation that exists now. But it’s morally wrong, nonetheless. And whatever is morally wrong must be redressed at once, regardless of the consequences.”