One of the first things we (hopefully) learn about the nature of evil is that it rarely comes in pure form. It's less a shot than a mixed drink most of the time. We also learn that people never think of themselves as evil. So as easy as it may be to call Hitler an evil man, for example, we should remember that even Hitler thought he was doing the right thing.
We ALSO learn that, while things are rarely pure evil, pure evil does exist, and the eggheads and artists and elitist snobs who can never bring themselves to call evil for what it is represent a particular danger all their own.
I've become fascinated recently with how the elusive nature of evil applies to two of what my culture considers the most evil causes in Western history. First, we have the Confederacy. Then, we have the Nazis.
Robert E. Lee and Adolf Hitler have come to symbolize the Confederates and the Nazis respectively. And it is staggering how, revolving around a nexus of some of the purest evil you'll ever find, each man had quite a bit of legitimacy to his cause.
Let's consider the cause of the Confederacy. The South felt that the North had attained an unacceptable level of dominance in the federal government and that the federal government was becoming unacceptably powerful as related to the traditionally more influential state and local governments. The felt, in short, that they were underrepresented at the national level and that they were essentially becoming colonies of the Northern industrial states. And they were right.
The Confederates had an airtight case in arguing that their states and their institutions would be far better represented if they broke from Washington D.C. The problem, of course, is that none of this matters. Why? Slavery.
Slavery as an institution is one of the few things that all civilized people must call evil. Not "evil but...." No, slavery is simply evil. Period. Like genocide, slavery is an exception to the rule that very few things or people are purely evil.
So all the limited-government, local autonomy arguments that the Confederates made were rendered irrelevant by virtue of this evil at the center of their system. Ultimately, the Confederates' definition of "states' rights" included that "states" should have the "right" to deprive 40% of their population of all legal, civil, and human rights. And that, of course, is bullshit.
It's also a tragedy, of course, because that island of evil at the heart of the Confederacy cancelled out whatever just elements their cause may have had and it prevented a more open and honest debate about the proper role of the federal government. Instead, a very American idea (divided sovereignty and local autonomy whenever possible) was tied to the rock of slavery and thrown overboard.
It's unfortunate, of course, that the Confederates mixed legitimate grievances with the diehard defense of a completely illegitimate institution, and the end result was that those legitimate grievances were rendered utterly irrelevant.
We see a similar dynamic in Germany.
The Nazis had some very legitimate grievances of their own. Their country had NOT lost the Great War on the battlefield, nor had it been solely responsible for the start of that war by any stretch of the imagination.
Germany HAD been willfully subjected to mass starvation as a terrorist tactic intended to induce surrender in 1918 (it worked). Germany HAD been stripped of huge swathes of territory and property and citizens and subjected to punitive debts that were literally impossible to ever pay off.
Those things DID happen, and when you realize that Hitler never invaded any non-German territory before Great Britain declared war on Germany, it casts that war in a much different light.......but...
We all know what that "but" is. Although the Holocaust was not a cause for the war, as it began only after the war was well under way, it was used as an excuse to entirely ignore the just aspects of Germany's cause.
As soon as the Nazi state started running murder factories which killed thousands of women and children daily, the Nazi "cause" ceased to have any relevance. All that was relevant was that they were engaged in PURE evil, and that this behavior deprived them of any defense, any context, any buts.
Again, the tragedy is that the island of evil at the center of the enterprise overshadows the rest of the story and we lose out on an opportunity to really struggle with why World War II happened. Instead the victors use the Nazis' wartime atrocities as retroactive justification for that war.
I can't argue with this tendency, especially as applied to what our children are taught in school. Slavery and genocide are so purely evil that we cannot afford to explain the background, the nuance, the context, because to do so may imply extenuation or justification. And due to this, we lose most of the story and are left only with the evil.
We ALSO learn that, while things are rarely pure evil, pure evil does exist, and the eggheads and artists and elitist snobs who can never bring themselves to call evil for what it is represent a particular danger all their own.
I've become fascinated recently with how the elusive nature of evil applies to two of what my culture considers the most evil causes in Western history. First, we have the Confederacy. Then, we have the Nazis.
Robert E. Lee and Adolf Hitler have come to symbolize the Confederates and the Nazis respectively. And it is staggering how, revolving around a nexus of some of the purest evil you'll ever find, each man had quite a bit of legitimacy to his cause.
Let's consider the cause of the Confederacy. The South felt that the North had attained an unacceptable level of dominance in the federal government and that the federal government was becoming unacceptably powerful as related to the traditionally more influential state and local governments. The felt, in short, that they were underrepresented at the national level and that they were essentially becoming colonies of the Northern industrial states. And they were right.
The Confederates had an airtight case in arguing that their states and their institutions would be far better represented if they broke from Washington D.C. The problem, of course, is that none of this matters. Why? Slavery.
Slavery as an institution is one of the few things that all civilized people must call evil. Not "evil but...." No, slavery is simply evil. Period. Like genocide, slavery is an exception to the rule that very few things or people are purely evil.
So all the limited-government, local autonomy arguments that the Confederates made were rendered irrelevant by virtue of this evil at the center of their system. Ultimately, the Confederates' definition of "states' rights" included that "states" should have the "right" to deprive 40% of their population of all legal, civil, and human rights. And that, of course, is bullshit.
It's also a tragedy, of course, because that island of evil at the heart of the Confederacy cancelled out whatever just elements their cause may have had and it prevented a more open and honest debate about the proper role of the federal government. Instead, a very American idea (divided sovereignty and local autonomy whenever possible) was tied to the rock of slavery and thrown overboard.
It's unfortunate, of course, that the Confederates mixed legitimate grievances with the diehard defense of a completely illegitimate institution, and the end result was that those legitimate grievances were rendered utterly irrelevant.
We see a similar dynamic in Germany.
The Nazis had some very legitimate grievances of their own. Their country had NOT lost the Great War on the battlefield, nor had it been solely responsible for the start of that war by any stretch of the imagination.
Germany HAD been willfully subjected to mass starvation as a terrorist tactic intended to induce surrender in 1918 (it worked). Germany HAD been stripped of huge swathes of territory and property and citizens and subjected to punitive debts that were literally impossible to ever pay off.
Those things DID happen, and when you realize that Hitler never invaded any non-German territory before Great Britain declared war on Germany, it casts that war in a much different light.......but...
We all know what that "but" is. Although the Holocaust was not a cause for the war, as it began only after the war was well under way, it was used as an excuse to entirely ignore the just aspects of Germany's cause.
As soon as the Nazi state started running murder factories which killed thousands of women and children daily, the Nazi "cause" ceased to have any relevance. All that was relevant was that they were engaged in PURE evil, and that this behavior deprived them of any defense, any context, any buts.
Again, the tragedy is that the island of evil at the center of the enterprise overshadows the rest of the story and we lose out on an opportunity to really struggle with why World War II happened. Instead the victors use the Nazis' wartime atrocities as retroactive justification for that war.
I can't argue with this tendency, especially as applied to what our children are taught in school. Slavery and genocide are so purely evil that we cannot afford to explain the background, the nuance, the context, because to do so may imply extenuation or justification. And due to this, we lose most of the story and are left only with the evil.
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