What is Evil?

Its a common experience to hear someone or something described as ‘evil.’ From President Trump to President Biden, Nancy Pelosi and everyone in between. Its likely that we’ve used this word for people in our own lives – high school bullies, your ex, your neighbor, or maybe an in-law. Being evil in today’s parlance is a low-stakes insult, and the word is casually thrown around for all sorts of ills. The formal definition of evil is interesting: Intending to harm; malevolent.

Key here is the word intending. It’s often assumed that for something to be truly evil, harm must be the intent rather than an unfortunate side-effect or an accident of a well-intentioned act gone wrong. This assumption is so well-known, its baked into our laws. Manslaughter is the charge one receives when they take a life by accident. Murder is the charge when it is done on purpose, and carries a significantly higher penalty. 

The truth is that evil is almost never done with the intent of causing harm. As the old adage goes, the pathway to hell is paved with gold. Some of the most heinous atrocities in human history have always been committed with those who genuinely believed they were creating a better world – Hitler, Stalin, and Mao all thought they could build a better nation and a purer race by purging undesirables. Pol Pot and the French revolutionaries thought they were ushering in an age of prosperity and freeing their people from the bonds of servitude. Al-Qaeda and ISIS thought they could rid the world of a Great Devil. Even Ted Kaczynsky, an indisputable genius, was still not smart enough to see that killing innocent people makes others turn from your cause, no matter how rational or well-argued it is. Therefore, I contend that it is a mistake to assume that people’s evil outcomes were initially a result of evil intentions. Being able to differentiate someone’s goals from their outcomes is crucially important not only when studying history, but also when planning for the future so as not to make the same mistakes when pursuing similar goals. As we shall see, when pursuing noble goals, one will often be compared with someone else who committed great acts of evil in similar pursuits. This, I believe, is one of the most pernicious logical fallacies of our day.

Let us examine a tangible example. President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is likely the most controversial and impactful legislation that many Americans have seen in their lifetime. Republicans, concerned with the cost and governmental overreach, forcefully opposed the bill. Democrats, spurred by generational visions of change and embittered by poor healthcare policies, championed the legislation which would eventually become law. In the process, a deep, bitter political divide was formed. We cannot understate how rapidly and forcefully politics became divided under President Obama - In 2004, the median Republican and Democrat shared quite a bit of overlap and were not ideologically disparate on core issues. By 2011, that gap had widened significantly. In the midst of the frenetic debates on the ACA, it became a common refrain for Republicans to call Democrats ‘socialists’ for their support of the bill.

The insult harkens back to the days of McCarthyism some sixty years prior, where being a suspected or confirmed socialist was enough to get you blacklisted from society and even arrested in some cases. Even the accusation of being a socialist was enough to permanently tar someone’s reputation. As a result of Cold War tensions, in which spying and compromised loyalties were a fear in the heart of every American, the presence of socialists was a real, tangible, and dire threat. Therefore, any association with the word was a true and powerful insult. By 2010, the insult had lost most of its meaning, but still lingered and was used with the intent to ostracize and ultimately condemn the Democrat party for supporting the ACA. The hope was that enough Democrats would be so unnerved by receiving the label of socialist that they would abandon their support of the bill. This did not happen. 

Much to the chagrin of the Cold-War era generation, calling someone a socialist in 2010 carried zero repercussions. More importantly, it overlooked a key detail of the debate: American healthcare policy was (and still is) widely unpopular for all Americans. According to a Gallup poll, satisfaction with our healthcare system has been declining since 2001 and has hit a record low every year since they started tracking. It wasn’t just Democrats looking for a better healthcare system – it was the majority of Americans. Therefore, Americans didn’t say “I want government run healthcare.” They said “I want different healthcare, whatever that looks like.” They were willing to accept virtually any change to the system, but the only option that was seriously put forward was the ACA. 

When Republicans started crying socialism, without offering a better alternative, many Democrats threw their hands in the air and said “if wanting better healthcare makes me a socialist, and there are no other options on the table, then I guess that’s what I am.”  Contrary to the age of McCarthyism, there were now zero side effects of being saddled with that label, and here is where the problem arises; actual socialism is evil, but Americans wanting better healthcare was not. By conflating the two groups together, the insult lost any gravitas it may have had in the past. Not only did the insult not work, it actually backfired. Socialism now has an almost 40% approval rating in the United States with a shocking 66% approval rating among Democrats. Simply put: Labelling someone as being aligned with a demographic that has a negative reputation, without there being a consequence for being a member of that demographic, makes it safe to become that demographic. In other words, calling someone a socialist without there being a repercussion for actually being a socialist makes it safe, even trendy, to openly be one. Like Americans adopting Yankee Doodle in the Revolutionary War, it is a guarantee that insulted communities adopt their insults rather than disown them.

Now we must apply this thought process to those who use the words Nazi and Fascist indiscriminately. It is unlikely that those who use these words even know what they mean. For example, here is the Nazi party’s policy platform. It is difficult to imagine how modern American conservatives can be viewed similarly to Nazis when the Nazis pursued political goals such as the nationalization of all industries, a division of profits of all heavy industries, an expansion on a large scale of old-age welfare, and the complete expropriation of land for ‘national interest,’ all values that modern conservatives vehemently oppose. Likewise, the definition of fascism inherently requires a dictator, but it is conservatives who consistently espouse the values of the founding fathers and the constitution, all of which prohibit such a form of government. 

Wanting secure borders and a culturally homogenous population is not only a global and historical norm, it is also reasonable and rational. This does not deter leftists however; they scream Nazism and fascism at the slightest provocation. In so doing, they take normal debates and turn them into emotionalized rants, removing the stigma of being associated with a Nazi or fascist. By doing this, they make it once again safe for people who would otherwise find these labels repulsive to instead identify with those movements. The thought process goes something like this: “If wanting to live in a community that supports and reflects my sincerely-held values makes me a fascist, then I guess I am a fascist.” and thus, the word and stigma have lost all meaning. Furthermore, actual fascists are watching these debates and determining that being a fascist is safe, and even perhaps trendy. Being a normal conservative and wanting historically normal things is not fascist. However, if those desires are deemed to be so, then they will likely adopt that label as Democrats have adopted the Socialist label, and people may find genuine fascists on a ballot. The Balkanization of the United States will swiftly follow and the conflict between cities, neighborhoods, and even families will be nasty.

We opened this essay by stating that evil is never done with the intent of creating harm, but is almost exclusively committed in the act of pursuing righteousness the wrong way. Poor outcomes don’t equal poor intent, and divining the intent of someone’s heart can go a long way in reducing the inflammatory rhetoric that has engulfed our nation. Democrats weren’t evil when they asked for better healthcare, and Republicans aren’t evil for asking for homogenous and safe communities. By throwing these labels around without any care, what we’ve done is inadvertently open the door for genuine evil to crawl its way out of the abyss. When normal leftists were called Socialists, actual Socialists were allowed to crawl their way out of the parent’s basement with zero repercussions. Now, one is the mayor of America’s largest and richest city. Political violence is on the rise, and it is becoming increasingly likely that dramatic action will have truly evil consequences. We must not get so caught up in the turbulence of the current political climate to the point where we cannot see the forest through the trees. Calling normal, rational behaviors ‘evil’ will cause others to treat it as evil, and that will not end well for people who thought they were simply engaging in normal political discourse.