“For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863.

In 1998 I was running a television newsroom in Erie, Pennsylvania. That year the Ku Klux Klan announced plans to hold a rally in front of the Erie County Courthouse.

From the calls we received in the newsroom it was clear that most of our viewers, who abhorred the Klan, wanted us to ignore the rally and keep our cameras away — insisting that covering the rally would just give them what they wanted: free publicity.

We covered the rally.

In 2007 I was running a television newsroom in Wichita Falls, Texas. A beloved local resident had died fighting in Afghanistan. We learned that his funeral would be picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.

This is the church that loudly declared that because America tolerated homosexuality, the nation’s institutions, including the military, were loathed by God. This led members of the church to picket the funerals of soldiers nationwide with signs advising mourners that their loved ones were now in hell.

Our viewers pleaded with us not to cover the event.

We covered it.

We took no joy in doing it.

We realized it wasn’t likely to boost the ratings. In fact, they would probably drop. Nevertheless, we did what we thought was right. I’d do it again today.

Let’s talk about it.

The world is filled with good people who want to work hard, raise their families, help other people, get along, and generally do what’s right. They are the vast majority of us. Everywhere in the world, whatever our color, whatever our faith, whatever our living conditions, we are the majority.

But there are also people in the world who are filled with darkness. They are only a small minority of the human race, but they exist, and have existed in every generation. They plot and scheme and go out of their way to cause chaos for the rest of us.

Such people baffle the majority of good people like you, and like me. The fact that we can’t understand them makes us want to ignore them, as if ignoring them will make them go away.

They love it when we do this.

They want nothing more than to be left alone to plot and scheme and hate. And then we become their victims.

Here’s the bottom line. Accurate information is the fuel that enables democracies to thrive. Darkness is driven by secrecy.

Let me put it more simply. I want to know what the crazies are up to.

I want to know what the threats are and where they’re coming from. I want to know how the haters hate, why they hate, and how they plan to put their hatred into practice.

My newsroom covered the KKK in Pennsylvania so people could see their friends and neighbors shouting that the old oak tree in front of the county courthouse would be a great place for some good ol’ fashioned lynchings.

My newsroom in Wichita Falls was ready to show our viewers the degree to which the message of Christ’s love could be twisted by a few into a desecration of all he died for.

Does such coverage serve as an inadvertent recruiting tool for the disaffected, sick ones among us? Perhaps. Nothing is perfect. But in the end, the need for the majority of us to know and understand what’s going on under our noses outweighs to need to keep things hidden from the tiny, sick minority. Only if we’re informed can we take meaningful action to prevent the future desecrations by the few.

Today we know Longfellow’s poem as the beloved carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” He concludes with the uplifting thought that “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, goodwill to men.”

It’s 156 years since those words were written, and we’re clearly not there yet. Perhaps we never will be, as long as mortal humans are running the show. Nevertheless, awareness of the problem will always be the first step in overcoming it.

Because we, the good guys, are the overwhelming majority. Never forget it.

Chris Huston is an author and award-winning columnist who lives in southern Idaho. Connect with Chris on Facebook at Chris Huston-Finding My Way, and at www.chrishustonauthor.com.