Dangerous Minds

                         Dangerous Minds

Dangerous Minds

                             ‘…the worst

Are full of passionate intensity’.

                                                    [W.B. Yeats: The Second Coming]

Zealots are dangerous. Their minds are closed

  About their sole enthusiastic cause:

    Their bright eyes blind to contra-evidence,

    Their keen ears deaf to counter-arguments.

Facts, logic, reason: these are all opposed

  With energumen bigotry because

    Such might discredit partisan appeal

    In those they would subvert to their ideal.

Zealots are narrow-minded, obstinate,

  Insolent activists who daren’t allow

    Rational thought to moderate the spate

    Of their obsessed intensity. They know

Nothing of tolerance, of compromise, of sense;

Cynic determination their chief competence.