dagblog - Comments for "There is No Evil"

all one can say really

Elusive Trope — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 04:45:20 +0000

In reply to And it was a hot day, and

all one can say really

And it was a hot day, and

Elusive Trope — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 03:37:23 +0000

In reply to I seem to remember an Arab, a

And it was a hot day, and what, did my mother die? and you want me to confess my sins? the sun was so bright.

(No subject)

Elusive Trope — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 03:34:35 +0000

In reply to I seem to remember an Arab, a

I seem to remember an Arab, a

Michael Maiello — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:03:39 +0000

In reply to Not all sociopaths become

I seem to remember an Arab, a beach, a hot day and an author quite familiar to you.

Megan McCardle, who in the

NCD — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 23:59:30 +0000

In reply to There is No Evil

Megan McCardle, who in the same piece advocated training 6+ year olds for Banzai charges against armed psychopaths, another nutty right wing Coulter/Malkin wannabe.

Nice skewering of her blather.

Okay, I hereby render unto

Richard Day — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:33:17 +0000

In reply to Not all sociopaths become

Okay, I hereby render unto Trope the Dayly Line of the Day Award for this here Dagblog Site, given to all of him from all of me for this gem:

Not all sociopaths become serial killers (Some become Hedge fund managers).

hahahahahaha

And how much human suffering; how much blood letting; how much misery has been caused by these evil bastards? ha!

Not all sociopaths become

Elusive Trope — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:17:58 +0000

In reply to Thank you, Trope, for

Not all sociopaths become serial killers (some become hedge fund managers). It is interesting that in spite of all of the advances we have made, we still are unclear about free will. Some of the advances in the study of the brain indicates we have less free will than previously thought. This makes me think of the Law & Order episode where the defendant's lawyer attempted to claim he couldn't be held responsible for killing a black man for taking his cab because racism was a mental disease, just like road rage, and he was thus unable to control his actions.

I hadn't thought about it in exactly these terms, but should Lanza be seen as destined to commit the mass shooting. Was there some moment, even without professional mental health or law enforcement intervention, that could have made him move down a slightly different path. No less tormented than he obviously was, but not an infamous mass shooter. We will never know the answer to that question, but which side on falls on regarding one's speculative answer says a lot about how one views not only human nature, but our roles as neighbors within a larger community.

Winston Churchill rallied his

acanuck — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:00:24 +0000

In reply to I think one of the most

Winston Churchill rallied his countrymen to defeat "these evil men, these Nazis." His simple phrase strikes me as packed with meaning. You may do something monstrous, but you do not have the excuse of being a monster. You are and remain a human being who has chosen to do evil, and that is far worse.

The Nazis set, hopefully for all time, the benchmark for evil. But it's crucial to grasp that virtually an entire nation, even if wilfully blind to the worst atrocities carried out in their name, bought into the overall sick ethos. Not monsters -- real people who liked good food and drink, celebrated holidays, and loved their kids and neighbors.

That's the problem with wars. We always see them as conflicts between good and evil -- with us, needless to say, as the good guys. That certainty is a trait we share with the Nazis, Osama bin Laden and even Adam Lanza. They were only human, so they could be wrong. Just as we can. A good rule of thumb is, if your solution to a problem is to start killing people, you've probably made an error of judgment somewhere along the line.

To sum up, there's a fine line between good and evil, so we should be very cautious in calling things one or the other. But murder, especially mass murder, pretty clearly crosses that line. Starting wars is mass murder.

This notion of "giving up

AmericanDreamer — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 21:09:06 +0000

In reply to I believe that the NAZI's

This notion of "giving up one's humanity" through commission of particularly horrible acts troubles me. Isn't the doing of evil acts also part of humanity, of what humans are capable of doing and sometimes do?

Having a word such as evil serves the powerful emotive and sometimes social purpose of galvanizing an individual or collective responses to the commission of acts which are judged intolerable. ("I/we are going to do something about this.") I would argue that the responses to evil acts can also be evil. It would seem as though historically, evil responses to perceived evil acts are often "justified" by claiming that those on the receiving end are less than fully human, and therefore whatever might otherwise constrain the cruelty humans inflict on other humans in other contexts does not apply to the one in question.

It seems that retaliatory evil acts can also be ineffective or even counter-productive in reducing the future extent of evil behavior.

I believe that the NAZI's

Richard Day — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 20:52:25 +0000

In reply to If I had been there at that

I believe that the NAZI's gave up their humanity.

I believe the Masters of War gave up their humanity and I would not remove Nobel from that although he found humanity later on in life.

I believe the NRA has given up its humanity (even though it is a corporate entity) and it has given up its humanity for money and power. Not all members of the NRA have given up their humanity and many NAZI's did not give up their humanity.

Orly Taitz as innocuous as she is remains one of the espousers of evil. She has recently claimed that Obama had the shooter drugged and sent to shoot the babies in CT so that he could take away all of 'our' guns.

She is not just a foreigner, she is evil. She says what she says for money and power with absolutely no belief in truth or facts or normal protocols; just as the NRA; just as radio NAZI's; just as the FOX fascists.

Oh there is evil out there to be sure.