Little Evils

Serial killers generally don't start out killing people. They start by torturing a doll or an animal. Dictators generally begin their careers by doing something good for their people. Hitler, for example, got the German economy running and some would argue more importantly, he got the trains running on time. Jack Abramoff didn't start his career by bribing congressmen, he started with slightly shady deals.

Evil generally doesn't appear full-blown. No one I know would torture someone to prevent a petty theft but practically everyone would to save a million lives. That would be perceived as a small evil against the greater good. The problem is, the sum of small evils is never the greater good, rather a greater evil.

In our time, we face small evils on a daily basis: the erosion of civil liberties called the Patriot Act, the attempted power grabs by the Executive branch of government, unchecked wiretapping, little tortures of prisoners in Guantanamo, the disappearance from the streets of a few bad individuals, the wholesale corruption in Congress that began with little gifts from unscrupulous men. We face times of tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor, of attempts to drill in the ANWAR without any attempt to conserve energy. These are small evils, hell, I'd give up ANWAR in a heartbeat for meaningful energy conservation and carbon dioxide emission reduction measures. The problem is they aren't adding up to a greater good as defined by our so-called leadership as a war on terrorism or a healthy economy. Homeland Security funding, a backbone of any real war on terrorism, have been allocated by some arcane political formula by which rural communities in Montana get chemical attack detectors and New Orleans gets tragic hurricane response. Alaska gets a half-billion dollar bridge to link fifty people to Anchorage while student loans are cut for the poor. Such are the little evils perpetrated on us.

Our former friends abroad no longer trust us, such is the sum of little evils under our current leadership. Five years of Republican preeminency have resulted in flat incomes but increased prices and I'm sorry, folks, you can't factor energy and food out of inflation. Oil jumps two dollars a barrel based on a weather forecast, such is the result of the little evils of poor energy policy and reliance on status-quo solutions, the very definition of conservatism. We have become a nation with a serious debate about torturing people, a nation with secret prisons abroad, a nation that spies on its own citizens, a nation that pays for propaganda.

Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were the sum of little evils, many of which are being perpetrated in Washington today. The Conservatives have brought the word "evil" back into fashion. Perhaps they should look at what constitutes evil and what constitutes good. The greater good is served by only one type of deed, good deeds. The little evils being perpetrated on us today only serve to erode our way of life, our freedoms and our standing in the world.