re: #98 buzzsawmonkey

Among other things, the “Satanic day-care child-abuse” scare is a reminder that we are never as distant as we might comfortably like to think from the hysteria of the Salem witch trials, or that of the Palmer raids—or the excesses of the McCarthy period.

Civilized behavior and the rule of law are far more fragile than most people think. Hysteria will trump either of them.