Here is a man who should be damned by all tolerant people.
The images tweeted by passengers on that trip – of limbs and torsos crammed haphazardly into every available pocket of oxygen – should be damning, but in truth, they have become so routine that they barely even make an impression.
My head says I should be damning Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, the husband-and-wife writers, for the lazy and derivative format (cf Little Miss Sunshine, The Straight Story, etc); but my soft heart is urging me to praise them for importing a little originality into it.
No doubt he'd agree that it's odd, if not downright hypocritical, for them to be so routinely talked about in the language of pandemics or military conquest ("swarms", "invasions"), or that they should be damned for their perceived nomadism when non-Roma society fetishises speed and circulation, weekend breaks and EasyJet getaways.
But Wodeham insists that no one should be damned for not doing what is not in their power to do (OO IV, 57 59, ll. 11 30; cf. Adams and Wood 1981, 14).
Whose souls should be damned, those men who rape children or a woman who wants to join the clerical club; according the Catholic Church it's the woman.
But I should be damning Cromwell as well, and I cannot, because Mantel has made him so deeply human, flawed but decent?
To me these transgressions affect a lot more people than Congressman Weiner's sordid blunder and should be damned by all responsible people.
In a private discussion with general Gourgaud during his exile on Saint Helena, Napoleon expressed materialistic views on the origin of man,and doubted the divinity of Jesus, stating that it is absurd to believe that Socrates, Plato, Muslims, and the Anglicans should be damned for not being Roman Catholics.
