Engineering Genocide
After studying famous cases of genocide, some geniuses have come to a startling conclusion: humans all have a dark side. Stunner! A cursory examination of human history yields the same obvious conclusion, but apparently this is news to some folks. (It wouldn’t surprise me if there were government funds somewhere behind this brilliant work.) Some of the statements would be comical if only they weren’t so widely believed. For example,
“You don’t have to be mentally ill or even innately evil or criminal. You can be ordinary, no better or worse than you or me, and commit killing or genocide,” said Harvard psychiatrist Robert Lifton, who has studied Nazi doctors.
This “expert” lumps killing and genocide together, not recognizing the fact that there are numerous situations in which killing is perfectly, morally justifiable. The two simply cannot be equated. But worse than this is the bald statement that those committing genocide are not “innately evil or criminal.” They are both. Genocide is universally recognized by all normative moral systems as both evil and criminal. Further, the Judaeo-Christian moral system upon which all of Western civilization, and our nation in particular, is based teaches us that we are all inherently evil. (This, too, comes as no big surprise to anyone who has children. The little beasts must be taught every bit of morality they ever learn—it isn’t built in.) Unfortunately we far too often fail to acknowledge this fact and, worse, fail to pass it on to each succeeding generation so it comes as a surprise when it is rediscovered.