But there are problems with over-reliance on evil. Saying a thing is evil puts it beyond the pale of understanding -- it cordones it off from doing anythng about it but shunning it or destroying it.

It is SUCH an easy manipulation. See that guy? He's evil. Let's get him! Or let's shun him. It is a concept that plays into the hands of demagogues on either side of the fence.

(The right hated Stalin, the left hated Hitler. The right hated Malcolm, the left hate Red Man tobacco chewers.)

Recent film about young Hitler was criticized savagely by people who had not seen it -- as "medicalizing" and this relativizing Hitler's culpability for the murder of millions. But in fact the movie takes us beyond the label of evil and helps us understand the reality of evil -- the resentment, the hatred, the cant, the lazy thinking, the vanity, and the acquiescence -- so necsary to evil -- of good people.

Finally, there is religion. In Christianity, the strongest warningd are against the sin of pride. Labeling someone else as evil, like the people stoning the faithless woman, you had better be clean yourself. Who of us is without sin, Jesus asked?

He despised the pharisees (unfairly, perhaps). He scorned their hycroprsiy in exteralizing all evil and unworthiness and being unreflective of their own sins and offenses against God.

Bottom line: we don't get to externalize evil until we have swept our own house.

And even then, it's problematic -- evil-designating is like patriotism, easy to do, and very powerful, but corrosive to our sense of our own obligations to God -- to turn the other cheek, to give Simon 7 x 70 chances, to be meek, and humble, and not a whited sepulchre.

It's odd to me that more Christians haven't rejected our era's embrace of "evil" as an external reality,outside ourselves. It is the opposite of the teachings of our own faith.

This is not to say that evil isn't evil. It's rather obviously so. But how does a Christian respond? To war, yes, under certain explicit circumstances. Jesus offers no leeway whatsoever for "first-strike" preemption, however. It is the opposite of "turn the other cheek."

So we have to choose between Christ and war. Sorry, Jesus.

Mike, Your concerns are subtle and important, but I disagree that we must have no sin in order to pass judgment: since we are human we can't be without sin, therefore are we to never pass judgment? This is absurd. Also, it isn't a preemptive first strike when you have already been attacked unprovoked. It's self-defense.

I agree that "evil" is dangerous and ought not be wielded lightly, but this does not dilute our resposibility to name it when we see it, AND to take action against it.

I don't think that certain this are "evil"... it's what people do with things. For instance, naked people aren't evil... but pornography industry, which exploits that, is. Because it is based off of human intentions... the intentions which are evil.

peace.

People judge, and they should judge -- but knowing they are in the eye of judgment too. So judge humbly and well, cuz what goes around ...

In other words, it very much does "dilute" our confidence in unthinking response.

And as a practical matter, we still operate in a theater of justice, where we are obliged to convince one another of the rightness of actions. Declaring things evil by fiat short circuits that obligation.

I am not proposing pacifism. It is univerally accepted that people have the right to defend themselves. I am merely saying that Christians are in a knot when we take upon ourselves the role of God -- judge and executioner. That is the definition of Christian sin -- taking God's prerogatives upon ourselves, whether in major or minor ways.

We talk a tightrope of introspection and public relations, continually taking our own temperature to be sure we are not full of shit, and pressing others to see (and sympathize with) our perspective.

But we must guard against is trumping up "self-defense" from dubious or fragmentary evidence -- that's the victim syndrome gone crazy -- using our wounds to justify afflicting worse wounds on others.

We're talking about Iraq here, right? Has Iraq attacked us, unprovoked? I know they've fired at our planes flying overhead, but does that constitute sufficient offense to go medieval on them?

The attack I'm fixated on is 9/11, which appears to have been by radical Islamists. That justified our actions against their organization and protectors in Afghanistan. But how does it relate to the crisis with non-Islamist Iraq?

THAT's the burden I'm talking about.