Lessons from Salem

Early American horror show

The Salem Witch Trials remain a hideous -- yet disturbingly familiar -- mystery.
By Laura Miller

Oct. 29, 2002  | The Salem Witch Trials are America's original home-grown horror. The crisis happened over 300 years ago in a world very different from today's -- and to people seemingly very different from ourselves -- and yet so many of its elements keep cropping up again and again in our public life. A panic that spreads like a virus, intimations of a vile conspiracy, children and young women horribly abused, a fog of accusations, shocking confessions, sensational trials, reputations destroyed, culprits (or scapegoats) located and harshly punished, and an aftermath in which anyone with a conscience looks back and asks, "What just happened? Did we really do that?"

Salem, too, is a challenge to everyone, whether on the left or the right, who sentimentalizes or idealizes the Way Things Used to Be. Feeling nostalgic for the peace and safety of small town life? Convinced that what the world needs now is a return to Christian values? Think that the trouble with contemporary society is that we've lost our sense of community? Well, Salem was a small town, as Christian as they come, and it's got to be Exhibit A on the list of what sucks about living in a place where everybody knows your name. 

As you may have noticed, I usually have a lot to say about the articles I link to - but this one says it so well, that I'm going to let it stand by itself.   The rest of the article is quite good as well, but these first too paragraphs really hit home with me.