People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.
It is important to rise above rationalizations and make the best choices.
Through Nic's drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything. . . . I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate. . . . It's only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he's not using hard drugs.
Questioning our own motives, and our own process, is critical to a skeptical and scientific outlook. We must realize that the default mode of human psychology is to grab onto comforting beliefs for purely emotional reasons, and then justify those beliefs to ourselves with post-hoc rationalizations.