Steve Dillender, Dusseldorf, Germany Al Qaeda's global reach Maureen Dowd's article "Killing evil doesn't make us evil" (Views, May 9) is brilliantly crafted and insightful.
For one thing, those who hold improbably evil views already believe themselves to be embattled victims of the forces of evil.
Before, he explains, it was hard to disseminate his "politically unfashionable" (and evil) views about Jews and blacks, and he was forced to rely on inefficient methods like leaflets and newspapers.
He gives the good-and-evil view of things a bad name.
This would lessen the degree to which religion is corrupted by political pressure, as well as freeing politicians from the compromise-is-evil view that seems to have bled from religion into congressional politics, where horse-trading is necessary to move legislation forward.
But he did not mention one disturbing similarity: both Truman and Bush put forth mythological, good-versus-evil views of the world that reinforced American self-righteousness, obfuscated United States global ambitions and blurred international power politics.
In any event, to note the ample dark side of evolution is simply to re-state the problem that any honest religion must confront: the problem of evil... View Article Robert Wright is the author of "The Evolution of God," "The Moral Animal," and "Nonzero".
By James L. Montague The New Yorker, November 26 , 1955P. 155 The Bishop of Verdun, from evil whim, View Article By David Remnick By Jelani Cobb By Jia Tolentino By Sam Knight.
By James L. Montague The New Yorker, November 26 , 1955P. 155 The Bishop of Verdun, from evil whim, View Article By Rivka Galchen By David Remnick By Malcolm Gladwell By Masha Gessen.
Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the true extent of Saddam's genocidal evil, my view was that Mr. Bush did not need to find any W.M.D.'s to justify the war for me.
