One snickers in advance at the notion of a Kristol Minor explainin’ the Origin and End of Evil. What Evil is good for in practice with him and his Big Management neocomrades could scarcely be plainer, but a theoretical disquistion? No, that exercise can only be asinus ad lyram piled on top of Coals-to-Newcastle. Still, snickering is kinda fun after its fashion, so please go right ahead if thee like, Mr. Bones:
| [T]he most revealing moment was the two candidates’ response to a question about evil. Yes, evil — that negation of the good that, Friedrich Nietzsche to the contrary notwithstanding, we seem not to have moved beyond. [An asker] asked whether evil exists and if it does, “do we ignore it? Do we negotiate with it? Do we contain it? Do we defeat it?” (...) Obama said that “we see evil all the time” — in Darfur, on the streets of our cities, in child abusers. Such evils, he continued, need to be “confronted squarely.” And while we can’t “erase evil from the world,” we can be “soldiers” in the task of confronting it when we see it. But, Obama added, “Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility” as we confront evil. Why? Because “a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.” After all, “just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t always mean that we’re going to be doing good.” It’s nice to see a liberal aware of the limits of good intentions — indeed, that the road to hell is paved with them. But here as elsewhere, Obama stayed at a high level of abstraction. |
The question having been formulated at a high level of abstraction, there can be no adult objection to that. The señorito-level objection one can see comin’ a mile off -- the Rev. B. Hussein was very near to suggesting that Evil might have something to do with Wunnerful US. Thee might even claim plausibly that The One™ actually did so suggest. The suggestion is perfect commonplace in theoretical Christojudaeanity, naturally, but what does a Kristol Minor care about doctrinal C-j? ‘Religion’ is for one’s servants to worry about, when one is -- or rather, when one’s daddy usetabe -- a certified Master of the Universe.
Also visible a mile off is that the wingnut laddie found Cap’n M’Cain’s harp-and-donkey show far more to his own taste. How so? Behold! It goeth like this:
| Unlike Obama, [the Flyboy Hero] took the question about evil to be in the first instance about 9/11. McCain asserted that “of course evil must be defeated,” and he put “radical Islamic extremism,” Al Qaeda in particular, at the top of his to-defeat list. In this context, McCain discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and concluded by mentioning “the young men and women who are serving this nation in uniform.” |
I repeat that the señorito does not indulge in so pedestrian a reflection as that if the Reverend Mister Seeker had wanted to seek out opinions about the Pentagon-WTC attacks, or about the Islamophalangitarian Menace, or anythin’ else specifically in the jihád careerist vein, he was perfectly free to do so. This approach puts us mere critics at an "apples and oranges" disadvantage, in that Kristol Minor obviously preferred the question that his Commanderissimo Presumptive answered, but had not been asked, far better than the previous exchange between the Senatorino and the Rev. Seeker, which more or less managed to stay on the same rails throughout its trajectory.
Thee are not to suppose, Mr. Bones, that it is only a matter of what ‘enemy’ or general type of ‘enemy’ one individual krusadin’ kiddie happens to prefer to be at ‘war’ against. Billy might just as well have mentioned the Caucasian abominations of M. Putin. The Caucasian abominations of Cyrus and Assurbanipal might do almost as well. For that matter, the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, would do, supposing that the Baní Murdoch happen to dislike their pollen enough. Anythin’ at all would do, almost, as long as it is very, very far removed from Wunnerful US.
Master Jackass has a very tin ear indeed for traditional C-j divinity. The notion that Evil and US are not on speakin’ terms is dead wrong semper et ubique et ab omnibus. The error is so far around the bend and out of sight that it is not even a haerêsis. It is only a stultitia.
But mark more closely how tonedeaf Master Jackass twistifies his mythological musicology, please. Regardless of what question was in fact asked, the Kristolian answer runs "So while Obama talked of confronting evil, McCain spoke of defeating it." There are several interesting aspects to that intellectual and ethical disgrace. For one thing, it is a very chickenhawk kind of stultitia to suppose, or even think or wish it to be supposable, that one’s enemies or ‘enemies’ can not possibly win. The Hero Aviator is no General Carl von Clausewitz, obviously, but he is not entirely to be identified with the low views of Corporal Thersites and Rear-Private William Kristol and Mess Sergeant Murdoch either. Saladin and Richard soar far over the head of Cap’n M’Cain, along with an alarming number of other things that a statesperson of highest degree may ideally be expected to be familiar with, yet, on a good day with the wind behind him, J. Sidney recognizes that there is, or ustabe, such a thing as Chivalry in the world. He does not consciously and deliberately prefer to be at ‘war’ with cockroaches in human form rather than with warriors -- or at very least with ‘warriors’. Though he be one dumb Mugwump, J. Sidney is at least no trashy señorito to think it would be nifty if ‘war’ could somehow be made indistinguishable from insect extermination.
To reascend from the earthbound Temple of Bellona to the Valhalla of Christojudaean Superstition and Enthusiasm, little Billy does not seem to understand what the word ‘evil’ means up there, what it has always meant to C-j theorists. It certainly has never meant bein’ a cockroach in human guise. The termites never, ever got a fair shake or a level playin’ field when they went up against this señorito’s present or former neocomrade, T. D. DeLay -- a radical asymmetry which only goes to prove that termites and cockroaches have nothing to do with Evil as the C-js conceive it.
As everybody both sane and interested in so sectarian and divisive a subject as Evil conceives it, for all I know to the contrary. Master Jackass has no notion what he is brayin’ about, unfortunately, when he brays about Evil. I assume that he does not hold that his neocomrade D. Frum actually invented (or discovered) Evil in conjunction with those grave factional studes of poles and axes and the like that one saw reflected in the orations of Little Brother in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang. But he might as well think that.
I don’t trust BHO an inch, thee should understand, O Bones! Nevertheless, unlike little Billy K., he did manage to say something both responsive and intellectually presentable. Matthew Arnold’s ever-immortal Bishop Wilson said it unbeatably, but B. Hussein managed well enough. [1]
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[1]
In the essay which follows , the reader will often find Bishop Wilson quoted. To me and to the members of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge his name and writings are still, no doubt, familiar; but the world is fast going away from old-fashioned people of his sort, and I learnt with consternation lately from a brilliant and distinguished votary of the natural sciences, that he had never so much as heard of Bishop Wilson, and that he imagined me to have invented him. (...) [I]t distresses one to think that the new lights should not only have, in general, a very low opinion of the preachers of the old religion, but that they should have it without knowing the best that these preachers can do. And that they are in this case is owing in part, certainly, to the negligence of the Christian Knowledge Society. In old times they used to print and spread abroad Bishop Wilson’s Maxims of Piety and Christianity; the copy of this work which I use is one of their publications, bearing their imprint, and bound in the well-known brown calf which they made familiar to our childhood; but the date of my copy is 1812. I know of no copy besides, and I believe the work is no longer one of those printed and circulated by the Society. Hence the error, flattering, I own, to me personally, yet in itself to be regretted, of the distinguished physicist already mentioned. |
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