A cross set aflame by men in white sheets is surely terrifying. But here's something possibly scarier: an Internet-connected, media-savvy gang of racists who cloak their members in suits and their rhetoric in mainstream politics. In 1999 which really sounds worse--a white supremacist with a club or one wielding a law degree?
The question isn't academic. In the 1990s hate has grown up and logged on. The Ku Klux Klan doesn't use the term cross burnings anymore; it prefers "sacred cross lightings." Klansmen have waged more legal war than race war in the past few years, trying (mostly in vain) to...