So I'm engaging in a bit of work-avoidance (not that I could have got anything done on the day, what with all the birthday stuff) by re-reading bits and pieces of my Go-To/All-Time-Favorite book. And on the evening I came across this passage which, to my mind, really ought to be a sort of preamble to the constitution of whatever club it is that Walkaways belong to:
The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.
