Self-righteousness and Left-Activism. Such a nonissue no need to read this quote:

By Stephen D’Arcy

Self-righteousness is a special case of being self-satisfied, complacent, smug. But here, the smug complacency refers specifically to a person’s belief that he or she complies, to a higher than normal degree, with the demands of some strict moral standard. This claimed moral superiority in turn is supposed to justify an attitude of scorn or disdain toward others, who supposedly fail to respect this high standard and in this way discredit themselves. Importantly, self-righteousness differs from simple “righteousness” — the insistence on doing the right thing, simply because it is the right thing — ivice rather than a virtue. Why, though, is self-righteousness a vice, not a virtue?

It is a vice for at least three reasons:

1. First, because the self-righteous person helps himself or herself to a higher standing than his or her peers, and so claims to be superior, almost in the manner of a “saint,” whereas we only accept the standing of moral superior as an...

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