But Ellsberg, as he candidly portrayed himself in a memoir called "Secrets" (Viking, 2002), possessed an uncommon, self-righteous need as both a hawk and then a dove to propel himself to the front ranks of warriors and resisters.
We need righteous indignation at policies that are causing enormous unnecessary suffering, the wasting of huge quantities of money and the undermining of a civil society.
Added to that, women need righteous and strong men who will help us to use our most cherished gifts: the ability to multitask and problem solve.
Both Bloods and Crips came from the black liberation movement, so the government used our revolutionary righteous thrust and need for freedom and justice, and turned it against us, creating the pop-cultural, subcultural mentality of the "thug".
But he ended by saying, "The people who want to ban books are prudish, small-minded, and self-righteous, and they need to get over it".
For the last several weeks, we as a country have collectively been engaged in a needed, righteous argument over why Confederate statues must go.
Instead of the maddening and beautiful brevity that made the site worth using, our timelines are about to be clogged by thick blocks of text from self-righteous nerds who need 30 adverbs to scream about how (((social justice warriors))) and/or Russian hacking ruined the latest braindead superhero blockbuster and their childhoods.
That is when righteous politicians feel the need to do something, bankers' frail balance-sheets and vivid memories make them eschew risk, and regulators have their backbones stiffened by public disapproval of past laxity.But we reform under the delusion that the regulated, and the markets they operate in, are static and passive, and that the regulatory environment will not vary with the cycle.
Most papers offer a variation on the argument that people's anger is righteous and reform is needed, but Prop 61 is a poorly constructed solution.
Tim is introduced as a self-righteous evangelist ("She needs to hear this," he admonishes Ruth when she tries to stop him from praying with her daughter after the game) but turns out to be ambivalent about his newly found religion, repeatedly slipping up with bouts of adulterous sex, gambling and alcohol.
They need to feel righteous, especially when they are being selfish, and nowhere more so than in the Obama administration.
