The devolution of evil

See No Evil

By Robin of Berkeley

One of the first books that made me thirst for God was, ironically, about His polar opposite. The book is Andrew Delbanco's The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil.

The author describes the disastrous results of Americans rejecting the concept of evil. When Satan was alive and well, citizens practiced the Ten Commandments, atoned for their sins, and worried about eternal damnation. But today, inhabitants eschew the devil as an anachronism of days gone by.

And what has been the result of the death of Satan? More bloodshed than ever before in the history of humankind. In the 20^th century alone, hundreds of millions of people were murdered by genocidal regimes.

And yet, why would banishing Satan result in a less civilized society? Because without an understanding about how good and evil work, people are stripped of Divine intelligence.

The number-one rule in warfare is this: Know thy enemy, whether it's radical Islam or plain evil. Yet most Americans, with heads firmly buried in the sand, have no idea how to cope when darkness rears its ugly head.

Their default is to find scapegoats, projecting all badness outward. Liberals routinely scapegoat conservatives. Yet by smearing an entire group of people, liberals become part of the evil themselves. Scapegoating is the quintessential feature of evil, says M. Scott Peck, in his seminal book, People of the Lie.

The most recent example of scapegoating is the smearing of conservatives, particularly Rush and Palin, for Jared Loughner's carnage in Tucson. Of course, part of this blame game is leftist politics as usual. As Rahm Emanuel declared, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Or as Saul Alinsky put it: find a target, isolate it, and ridicule and smear it. (Interestingly, Alinsky dedicated his Rules for Radicals to the old Devil itself, Lucifer.)

In Germany, it was the Jews, and in Cambodia, the scapegoats were intellectuals wearing glasses. When citizens are stripped of the knowledge of good versus evil, they revert to primitive, knee-jerk behavior.

So the left demonizes others, which is a fascinating term in and of itself. Instead of taking a good and hard look at themselves and how the left has unleashed and enabled the brutality, progressives tar conservatives as the demons.

The progressives do this by devilish actions: first, turning conservatives into subhumans, as the other. Then the leftist media and politicos finger conservatives as the culprits when horror strikes, as in Tucson. In this way, they incite hate, if not actual violence, via collective guilt -- that is, guilt by association.

Collective guilt is not just a noxious premise, but also an evil one. It presumes guilt without a shred of evidence.

In this case, conservatives are incriminated for Loughner's bloodshed (even though Loughner is apparently a Karl Marx-admiring atheist). The delusion of collective guilt shields people from taking a long, hard look in the mirror, thereby witnessing their own bad behavior.

Jared Loughner didn't shoot people because he was a conservative or a liberal. His madness had nothing to do with whether he listened to Rush or voted for Obama. He committed these crimes because something is wrong with his brain -- mental illness, brain damage, and/or substance abuse.

Somewhere down the line, Loughner may have made decisions that poisoned his soul, perhaps through devil worship. And this same process can happen -- is happening -- to people who allow evil to infiltrate their lives.

Just last week, we learned of a gang rape of a girl, which others watched, filmed, and uploaded onto the internet. Not long ago, a home-grown terrorist, Major Hasan, slaughtered our soldiers, including a pregnant woman. If these horrors aren't evidence of evil, then what's the explanation? George W. Bush? The Tea Parties?

But the progressives live in a fantasy world, with Good Guys (liberals) and Bad Guys (conservatives). They reject the ancient teachings, which teach how to live in an evil-saturated world.

The left denies that evil forces exist because they deny God. Evil cannot exist without its polar opposite, the Creator. And if there is a God, He is in charge, not human beings; and God will punish as well as bless. The left may, in fact, demand collective responsibility because they know, deep inside, that their character alone may not get them through the Pearly Gates.

And so leftists do what they always do: blame conservatives. They disown any responsibility for the dark times that are upon us. They exploit the Tucson tragedy, thereby creating more damage. And through it all, leftists cling to the notion that they are the Good Guys.

How can progressives possibly see the truth, that evil exists and so does God? They've rejected the only Force who will protect them in the pitch-black of night. Having slammed the door on Him, they must close their eyes to reality as well. See No Evil, Hear No Evil...

A frequent American Thinker contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley. Robin's articles are intended to inform and entertain, not to provide psychotherapeutic advice. You can comment on this article at this link.