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.
In a section titled "Evolving Metaphors of Infection: Teach War No More," Lederberg argues for moving beyond the traditional allegory of "microbe v. man" (or, to paraphrase the Nobel laureate microbiologist: the manichaean "We good; they evil" view).
It enjoyed a renaissance as people sought a religious explanation for the evil they viewed in the world.
He gives the good-and-evil view of things a bad name.
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.
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.
All down the ages good and evil have been viewed as two contending forces in perpetual conflict, and in the dual task of the riddance of evil and the induction of good the exorcist, the shaman, and the seer have exercised complementary functions hardly distinguishable in the higher cultural levels in Babylonia and Assyria.
That report, on China's alleged use of prison labor, "Slavery: A 21st Century Evil," can be viewed here.
