When Obama and McCain took part in the forum at the Saddleback Church the other day it aroused considerable interest, but much of that interest centered on how well Obama had done in the face of a potentially hostile audience and whether McCain had heard the questions in advance. Adele Stan on HuffPo also looked specifically at how each candidate answered the question on "evil".
Look, maybe it's just me, but the first thing that occurred to me is how on earth does someone like Rick Warren get to question the two presidential candidates? And have their performances taken seriously as part of the presidential considerations?
And the second thing that occurred to me is the bizarre nature of the question "Does evil exist and, if so, should we ignore it, negotiate it with it, contain it or defeat it?" If I was asked such a question my first reaction would be to roll on the floor laughing. My second would be to ask whether I had been somehow transported back to the middle ages. And then I might respond to the question at some length.
I might ask Mr Warren what he meant by "evil", but I think I know the answer. John McCain's answer was revealing, referring immediately to Osama Bin Laden and then Islam generally, and Obama talked of god "erasing" evil from the world. This is the old war on terror in a new form. Terror isn't a group that can be defeated, it is simply a set of techniques used by many different groups over many hundreds of years in asymmetric power struggles. Evil isn't a group either, simply an adjective that is used, subjectively, to describe grades of behavior - bad, very bad, evil. How is Mr McCain going to defeat an adjective?
Another part of my answer would be to suggest that even trying to defeat the adjective raises some questions. Was it Will Smith who got into trouble a few months back for suggesting that Hitler didn't get up each morning planning how evil he could be, but got up thinking he was doing his best for his country? Smith got dumped on for this, but it is obviously simply a statement of fact. Stalin was the same, and Robert Mugabe undoubtedly sees himself as the savior of his country.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, one man's evil is another man's patriotism. And looking more widely, behavior which many of us would now agree deserves the adjective beyond very bad, was in the past seen as perfectly normal. Slavery of course, torture, sending young children down mines and into factories, child brides, animal cruelty, imprisonment without trial, polygamy, genocide. You name it, some group has happily done it, and done it in the name of god quite often.
And finally I suppose I could accept the premise of the question, and say to Mr Warren, "yes, I believe in the evil adjective Mr Warren, and here is my partial list of what I would apply it to: Killing doctors at abortion clinics; executing people including juveniles and the mentally incapacitated; promoting gun ownership; invading other countries for oil; torturing people in Abu Graib and Guantanamo; pumping CO2 into the air; causing animal extinctions; preventing women getting contraceptive advice; continuing to use cluster bombs and land mines; continued development of nuclear and biological weapons; the promotion of prejudice on the basis of sexuality or race or religion; support for right wing dictators; maintenance of gender inequality; lack of health care for the poor; the war against science; promotion of huge wealth inequality. I pledge to fight against all those evil actions as President Mr Warren, are you with me?"
The Watermelon Blog is not just good, and not just very good, but excellent.