The actor Will Smith ignited a little firestorm of indignation when, in the course of an interview with a Scottish newspaper, he offered some observations on the inherent goodness of mankind:
“Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘let me do the most evil thing I can do today’,” said Will. “I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good’. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming.
One of the first reactions was a story in World Entertainment News: “Smith: ‘Hitler was a good person’” Then TMZ offered “Will Smith — Hitler, Schmitler; He Wasn’t That Bad.”
Well, no sooner had the indignation machine started up (”What, he is saying nice things about Hitler!”) than Smith issued this comment:
“It is an awful and disgusting lie. It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation. Adolph Hitler was a vile, heinous, vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet.”
Noted. Instapundit provides a quick round up of the ferocious commentary Smith’s remarks elicited, including this intelligent response from The Volokh Conspiracy:
It seems that “Will believes everyone is basically good” is just the reporter’s characterization of Smith’s statement. Nothing in the quoted material suggests that Smith was saying that Hitler was a good person. Rather, the quoted material simply reports Smith’s quite plausible view that Hitler, like many other people who do evil (Smith must have used Hitler as a referent precisely because Smith acknowledges that Hitler did do evil), believe that they are doing good. I’m hardly a Hitler scholar, but my sense is that Hitler did indeed believe that he was doing good, as did Stalin, Bin Laden, and various others.
Volokh rightly questions Smith’s blithe suggestion that evil “just needs reprogramming.” (Ponder the mountain of questions begged by that little adverb “just,” to say nothing of the inappropriately exculpatory word “reprogramming”: responsible individuals are subject to making choices, not “programming.”) And Volokh is also right that Hitler, like many of the world’s greatest monsters, “believe[d] that he was doing good.” (Volokh posts various reactions to his observation under the rubric: “‘Good’ Intentions and the Nature of Evil.”)
In essence, Smith was merely repeating the wise admonition, which you probably first heard from your mother or father, that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
But why should that be the case? Part of the answer involves the metabolism of benevolence.
Benevolence is a curious creature. Its operation tends to be more beneficent the more specific it is. This was a point that James Fitzjames Stephen, the great nineteenth-century critic of John Stuart Mill, made in his book Liberty, Equality, Fraternity:
The man who works from himself outwards, [Stephen wrote] whose conduct is governed by ordinary motives, and who acts with a view to his own advantage and the advantage of those who are connected with himself in definite, assignable ways, produces in the ordinary course of things much more happiness to others . . . than a moral Don Quixote who is always liable to sacrifice himself and his neighbors. On the other hand, a man who has a disinterested love of the human race–that is to say, who has got a fixed idea about some way of providing for the management of the concerns of mankind–is an unaccountable person . . . who is capable of making his love for men in general the ground of all sorts of violence against men in particular.
Political correctness tends to breed the sort of unaccountability that Stephen warns against. At its center is a union of abstract benevolence, which takes mankind as a whole for its object, with rigid moralism. It is a toxic, misery-producing brew.
The Australian philosopher David Stove got to the heart of the problem when he pointed out that it is precisely this combination of universal benevolence fired by uncompromising moralism that underwrites the cult of political correctness. “Either element on its own,” Stove observed,
is almost always comparatively harmless. A person who is convinced that he has a moral obligation to be benevolent, but who in fact ranks morality below fame (say), or ease; or again, a person who puts morality first, but is also convinced that the supreme moral obligation is, not to be benevolent, but to be holy (say), or wise, or creative: either of these people might turn out to be a scourge of his fellow humans, though in most cases he will not. But even at the worst, the misery which such a person causes will fall incomparably short of the misery caused by Lenin, or Stalin, or Mao, or Ho-Chi-Minh, or Kim-Il-Sung, or Pol Pot, or Castro: persons convinced both of the supremacy of benevolence among moral obligations, and of the supremacy of morality among all things. It is this combination which is infallibly and enormously destructive of human happiness.
Of course, as Stove goes on to note, this “lethal combination” is by no means peculiar to Communists. It provides the emotional fuel for utopians from Robespierre on down. That is the really sobering thing about Will Smith’s remark: not that he mentioned Hitler, but that the capacity for evil so easily cohabits and feeds upon the emotion of virtue.
In The Social Contract, Rousseau warned that “Those who dare to undertake the institution of a people must feel themselves capable . . . of changing human nature, . . . of altering the constitution of man for the purpose of strengthening it.” Robespierre & Co. thought themselves just the chaps for the job. The fact that they measured the extent of their success by the frequency that the guillotines around Paris operated highlights the connection between the imperatives of political correctness and tyranny–between what Robespierre candidly described as “virtue and its emanation, terror.”
That is the conjunction that should give us pause, especially when we contemplate the good intentions of the politically correct bureaucrats who preside over more and more of life in Western societies today. They mean well. They seek to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment. Inequality outrages their sense of justice. They regard conventional habits of behavior as so many obstacles to be overcome on the path to perfection. They see tradition as the enemy of innovation, which they embrace as a lifeline to moral progress. They cannot encounter a wrong without seeking to right it. The idea that some evils may be ineradicable is anathema to them. Likewise the traditional notion that the best is the enemy of the good, that many choices we face are to some extent choices among evils–such proverbial wisdom outrages their sense of moral perfectibility.
Alas, the result is not paradise but a campaign to legislate virtue, to curtail eccentricity, to smother individuality, to barter truth for the current moral or political enthusiasm. For centuries, political philosophers have understood that the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom. That species of benevolence underwrote the tragedy of Communist tyranny. The rise of political correctness has redistributed that lust over a new roster of issues: not the proletariat, but the environment, not the struggling masses, but “reproductive freedom,” gay rights, the welfare state, the Third World, diversity training, and an end to racism and xenophobia.
It looks, in Marx’s famous mot, like history repeating itself not as tragedy but as farce.
It would be a rash man, however, who made no provision for a reprise of tragedy.
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53 Comments
Jim C.:‘Rousseau warned that “Those who dare to undertake the institution of a people must feel themselves capable … of changing human nature, … of altering the constitution of man for the purpose of strengthening it.”’
Hillary Clinton, 1993: “Let us be willing to re-mold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the twentieth century; moving into a new millennium.”
Different commentators’ statements keep on reminding me of hers. And I keep on getting a scared feeling in the pit of my stomach that she was saying more than nebulous political rhetoric.
Dec 26, 2007 - 2:03 am TeachESL:Stop making a big deal out of what Will Smith said already! He intended nothing malevolent by his comments! And - yes - suppose he does believe that ‘reprogramming’ is the answer? I - too - believe that people can change under the right circumstances. Nobody is born ‘evil.’ Their thinking comes as a result of things that have happened to them throughout their lives.
Dec 26, 2007 - 3:31 am dfenstrate:I’ve always thought that Will Smith was one of the few hollywood stars I wouldn’t mind having over for dinner. He’s had several quotes that show him to be a straightforward, good-spirited guy.
Most of them come off as so utterly disconnected from anything real that they would be unsufferable in person.
I’m sure TeachESL is fuming that I’m talking more about will smith than your point.
Anyway, Great article, and I’m putting it in my personal quote file.
Dec 26, 2007 - 6:37 am mondonico:TeachESL: Roger’s piece doesn’t imply that Smith’s comments were malevolent or intended as such.
JimC: Thanks for the Hillary reference. I was not aware of it. It’s chilling. She really does seem stuck in the pseudo-scientific, Marxist, Trotsky-ism of the Left wing of the spoiled brat generation:
New Soviet man
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The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (новый советский человек), as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country’s long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.[1]
Lev Trotsky wrote in his Literature and Revolution [2] :
“The human species, the sluggish Homo sapiens, will once again enter the stage of radical reconstruction and become in his own hands the object of the most complex methods of artificial selection and psychophysical training… Man will make it his goal…to create a higher sociobiological type, a superman, if you will”
The questions about the forming of the “new” Soviet man were posed from the first days of the October Revolution. As Wilhelm Reich wrote: “Will the new social system translated into the structure of a human personality? If yes, then in what way? Will his traits be inherited by his children? Will he be a free, self-regulating personality? Will the elements of freedom incorporated into the structure of the personality make any authoritarian forms of government unnecessary?”[3]
The three major changes postulated to be indispensable for the building of the communist society were economical and political changes, accompanied with the changes in the human personality.[citation needed]
The Soviet man was to be selfless, learned, healthy and enthusiastic in spreading the socialist Revolution. Adherence to Marxism-Leninism, and individual behaviour consistent with that philosophy’s prescriptions, were among the crucial traits expected of the New Soviet man.
Dec 26, 2007 - 6:38 am Jay Manifold:I’d like to see primary sourcing of the HRC quote; the only other mention of it a quick search turns up is at http://www.rc.org/publications/present_time/pt94/pt94_07_ps.html, which is itself a phenomenally totalitarian proposal. The quote might be legit, but I’m not persuaded yet.
Dec 26, 2007 - 6:56 am JohnBoy:There was more wit and truth in the above article than in the entire New York Times Sunday edition. Great work!
Dec 26, 2007 - 6:57 am Classical Values:Slouching towards altruism
Something good has come from Will Smith’s ill-thought-out Hitler remarks. Or can I say that? I sometimes worry that Godwin’s Law may be swallowing most Hitler discussions, especially for a yakker like me, because nearly everything I might say about…
Dec 26, 2007 - 7:03 am JSDrummer1:This is so ridiculous. Just typical media doing what they do best and trying to ruin the reputation of good people like Will. What Will said wasn’t wrong, and anyone who thinks it was is an ignorant closed minded Nazi themselves. It’s okay though, I’m sure that people who make these negative comments about Will aren’t trying to be evil. They like Hitler are just deluding themselves.
Dec 26, 2007 - 7:19 am Curly Smith:Jay Manifold, try this for the sourcing for the HRC quote:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=kzX&q=clinton+1993+society+redefining+human+being&btnG=Search
(if the link doesn’t work do a Google search on “clinton+1993+society+redefining+human+being”
Dec 26, 2007 - 7:25 am Jim Harmon:TeachESL
Aside from the fact that Roger is effectively defending what Smith said, the real question is under what are those ‘right circumstances’ under which you believe people can change?
If nobody is ‘born’ evil, just what sort of reprogramming would you advocate for those poor individuals who are so scarred by their life esperiences that they meet your definition of evil?
Dec 26, 2007 - 7:30 am willis:“If nobody is ‘born’ evil, just what sort of reprogramming would you advocate for those poor individuals who are so scarred by their life esperiences that they meet your definition of evil?”
In Hitler’s case, a bullet to the brain would have worked wonders.
Dec 26, 2007 - 7:55 am tanstaafl:Adolph needed a lot more than reprogramming.
He needed different genes, different parents and a different upbringing.
His chronic dyspepsia fueled his paranoia while his (reported) chronic drug use fueled his megalomania.
Hitler was “reprogrammable” like Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy was reprogrammable.
As for bin laden, al zawahiri, al zarqawi, they are (or were) outcasts and criminals in their respective countries.
There isn’t a great deal of difference between their thinking of the function of the group and the way inner city gangs function.
Once the (perverted) power showed itself for the first time, it would only continue to need feeding.
“Islam” is the excuse, not the reason. A few verses on paper (allegedly 7th century, but not written down until maybe the 9th century) many having to do with the disposition of “booty” gained from marauding and, voilà, lets bomb whatever moves that is not us around the planet.
the politically correct bureaucrats who preside over more and more of life in Western societies today. They mean well. They seek to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment. Inequality outrages their sense of justice.
And here I thought it was all about (their own) sense of personal power and control and an attitude of condescension. This that has driven the unenlightened since time immemorial. Getting off on micromanagement extending beyond your own choice of which socks to put on that day.
Either way, the end result imprisons the spirits of the would be controlled.
(this session in Psychology 1A is (thankfully) closed)
Dec 26, 2007 - 8:01 am David:Dale Carnegie also teaches the principle that even the most evil people believe they are doing good. Therefore, the way to change people’s opinion is to tap into their belief that they’re on the side of good. I wonder whether Will Smith ever took the Dale Carnegie Course.
Dec 26, 2007 - 8:02 am holmegm:>TeachESL: Nobody is born ‘evil.’
>Their thinking comes as a result of
>things that have happened to them
>throughout their lives.
Hmm; I don’t know about that.
We’re born caring only about ourselves; screaming for our every need and want to be met immediately.
Dec 26, 2007 - 8:06 am Wacky Hermit:TeachESL: If people’s actions are so heavily influenced by events of their early life, how can events in their later life cause that influence to wane? Surely the events in their pasts that have heretofore determined their behavior will still be in their pasts?
Dec 26, 2007 - 8:10 am patagonianplato:In the Platonic Dialogue, Crito, Socrates states one of his most famous paradoxes. “No-one knowingly does wrong.” By this, he meant that ignorance causes us to do things that are bad for our souls. If a person understood:
a. The health of the soul is the only thing that truly matters. In the end, all else is irrelevant.
b. Bad actions imperil the health of the soul.
c. What constitutes good and bad?
If a person knew these things, the person would never commit a bad act. (Please read Crito plus related commentaries for a more detailed explanation.)
The purpose of the philosopher was to show the individual how to modify or correct their beliefs and behaviors, or as Mr. Smith put it, “reprogramming.”
My interpretation is that Mr. Smith’s comment is very Socratic. Perhaps if more people read Plato, there would not have been such a fuss over a very ancient philosophical precept.
Dec 26, 2007 - 8:28 am tanstaafl:Adolph Hitler’s concept of The New Order meant absolute Nazi German hegemony in Europe. (thank you for the refresher wikipedia)
In light of effecting that “vision”, the mass slaughter of “defectives” could be part of achieving the goal.
(cue second comparison to agenda of Radical Islam)
Hillary’s concept of the role of the federal government in The Republic is to use the power of taxation to redistribute income.
The authors of the US Constitution would shriek in horror at this perversion of its founding principles.
Dec 26, 2007 - 8:52 am Krisjhn:“On the other hand, a man who has a disinterested love of the human race—that is to say, who has got a fixed idea about some way of providing for the management of the concerns of mankind—is an unaccountable person …” - James Fitzjames Stephen
An all too apropos description of Al “I need to save mankind from itself” Gore.
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Dec 26, 2007 - 9:04 am DANEgerus:This was simply the most recent in a long line of Will Smith statements demonstrating his shortcomings.
To argue he ‘meant’ anything is to attribute to him intellect he hasn’t demonstrated previously.
Dec 26, 2007 - 9:05 am Joe:Ah, silly liberal moonbats. Can’t you see how wrong you are silly moonbats? GEORGE BUSH AWESOME vote RON PAUL!!!
Dec 26, 2007 - 9:14 am Anonymous:I suspect the real issue here is the acceptance of moral relativism -the left responds that there is no good and evil, that it is a conservative construction. All this, while they excoriate the right for wanting what they view as evil (whatever they don’t like at the moment) They can’t have both sides. The only cure is what the wisest of persons once said;” the truth shall set you free.” This is a “teachable moment” Those who would call the murder of millions of innocents a good-”Choice” and surrender to Jihad -”redeployment” and amnesty _a path to citizenship” all deserve to be called on it. Will did not mispeak at all - man’s conscience forces him to tell himself the biggest lie -”I do not sin -my sin is a good!”
Dec 26, 2007 - 9:19 am Don L:I suspect the real issue here is the acceptance of moral relativism -the left responds that there is no good and evil, that it is a conservative construction. All this, while they excoriate the right for wanting what they view as evil (whatever they don’t like at the moment) They can’t have both sides. The only cure is what the wisest of persons once said;” the truth shall set you free.” This is a “teachable moment” Those who would call the murder of millions of innocents a good-”Choice” and surrender to Jihad -”redeployment” and amnesty _a path to citizenship” all deserve to be called on it. Will did not mispeak at all - man’s conscience forces him to tell himself the biggest lie -”I do not sin -my sin is a good!”
Dec 26, 2007 - 9:19 am Xenu:Smith said, “Stuff like that just needs reprogramming.”
Ah, yes…. change the “Reactive Mind” tripe, courtesy of his very-best-new-good-friend—really! Tom Cruise and $cientology.
Bah!
Dec 26, 2007 - 9:37 am matthew:TeachESL, I must take issue with or possibly clarify your belief that our thinking is the result of circumstances throughout our lives.
We humans are not morally inert beings, we are not stones which life acts upon and which are smooth only because the ocean has rolled us so many times or which are rough and craggy because we were bruised against other, harder entities.
Our past does server to inform our future, but it is only one of two things (and the lesser at that) which are responsible for our beliefs, actions, thoughts, personalities, and pursuits.
The more important factor is our reaction and response to what has happened to us and around us.
As free moral agents, we have a responsibility to deal with each situation to the best of our abilities. It is the choices we make which primarily serve to determine our path.
Dec 26, 2007 - 9:37 am Fred:For some reason I’m reminded of the phrase from the Old Testament, “Each man did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6, NASB).
When I first read the quote of Will’s my first thought was the same as yours, i.e. nobody ever wakes up and says “I think I’m going to do evil today.” That only happens in bad movies. In reality every single person in the world thinks that they are basically good and are doing good works…
Dec 26, 2007 - 10:04 am David P:People,
Will Smith is a Scientologist. He just thinks Hitler needed to have his Thetans audited out.
Don’t bother trying to analyze or defend anything he says.
Dec 26, 2007 - 10:10 am Rick Dembinski:English: Some folks can speak it, write, and understand it. The level at which they comprehend it is based on their perception and ability to communicate it to others.
Read the following quote: “Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘let me do the most evil thing I can do today.’ I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good.’”
Any one who has (successfully) taken even the most basic schooling would realize that the quote refers to a perverted view of an individual.
Then again I am not a “professional” journalist or writer. I am merely someone who had average grades throughout his 12 years of public education. Maybe I am only seeing the obvious.
I would suggest to all readers of this kind of garbage to seek other forms of news to avoid getting a skewed and “perverted” view of any single topic.
What was Siobhan Synnot’s (Author of the original article.) final grade average? For that matter what was his final grade level?
Dec 26, 2007 - 10:37 am Maggie's Farm:The danger of benevolence combined with moralism
From a heavy-duty essay, by Rober Kimaball, a quote:Political correctness tends to breed the sort of unaccountability that Stephen warns against. At its center is a union of abstract benevolence, which takes mankind as a whole for its object, with rig…
Dec 26, 2007 - 10:42 am Jamelle:Don L, “strawman” much?
Please, for the sake of all of the commenters, provide an example of “the left” stating that there is “no good and evil.”
Regarding this post though, I think Roger is ignoring other pieces of the puzzle as it were. It wasn’t just benevolence that drove communist revolutionaries or various radicals; it was the corresponding belief that they had The Answer, and a belief in the perfectability of humans.
Anything done to “perfect” people in the name of an ideal was good, as it was a means to a much better end.
Dec 26, 2007 - 10:44 am JorgXMcKie:Jamelle, what about the oft-repeated meme,”One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”? You hear that on the Left, not the Right. And I’ve had to suffer way too many logic-choppers and decontructionists to want to get into what “the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
If *you* truly believe that The Left (generically speaking — I know they’re not all the same) *do* believe there’s a real difference (absent any action by McBusHitlerburton), please respond with a well-defined staterment of same.
Dec 26, 2007 - 11:44 am El Kabong:I would give Will Smith the benefit of a doubt. Saying “Stuff like that just needs reprogramming” may be accurate in a sense, as one of the Allies’ goals after the war was to de-Nazify Germany and re-program the society - although I (and none of you) know for sure that this was the meaning behind the quote.
I appreciate the essay, though, as it helps me put my finger on what I distrust so much about big-government types, Democrat and Republican alike, other than a reflexive “Stay out of my business!” feeling. This also demonstrates where progressives differ from liberals, and where, hmmm, compassionate conservatives (?) differ from conservatives - in the desire to power first the individual vs. the “greater good”. Give me empowered individuals first! The greater good will follow.
Dec 26, 2007 - 11:50 am mrscribbler:All I gotta say is that the United States of the 21st century was indeed the Soviet Union’s greatest success!
Dec 26, 2007 - 12:30 pm BMoon:Great article, Roger. Will Smith’s truth that evil is present in our best intentions, was clearly misinterpreted by the illiterate and oportunist hack writer. Yet, would not you agree that, while there is undoubtedly and a tragically illustrated grave danger in moralistic utopianism, there is perhaps an equal or graver danger in relegating all human endeavor to nonmoral categories. Chuck Colson sates, “When we try to explain away evil in terms of environmental, psychological, or genetic causes we fail to take it seriously and we fail to constrain it.” Where the best of modern men hem and haw, stutter and stumble, is rooted in their fear of all moral courses rather than investing thought and honesty as to discovering (or rediscovering) what is the right one. GK Chesterson spoke to the modern human dilemma when he said, “There are many, many angles at which one can fall, but only one angle at which one can stand straight.”
Dec 26, 2007 - 12:38 pm submandave:The problem I have with Mr. Smith’s comment was that it was very revealing of a certain mindset. I think very few people believe in the melodramatic “evil” character, twirling his handlebar moustache while the girl lies screaming and tied to the train tracks. What is telling, though, is that Mr. Smith along with many others in the Holywood/liberal crowd, seem to believe that us common rubes do think of evil that way and need to be taught that those doing evil are more complex than that. Mind you, this is also the same folks that feel a need to remind us that “war is bad” and “enemy soldiers are people too” and a score of other things I find to be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, but for some reason that think they have to communicate this grand and mystic knowledge. Maybe they are just trying to “reprogram” us?
Secondly, and more importantly, it is again a perfect illustration of the left’s obsession with motives or intentions over results. If the actions of Hitler were motivated by a genuine desire to do “good” as he perceived it is of no consequence to the millions that he ordered killed and died in the war he initiated. The “evil” is in the results, not the intent. Like many others in the real world, I would much rather have one do the right thing for the wrong reason than the wrong thing for the right reason. I can understand, as an actor, how understanding the “good” intentions of someone like Hitler or a fictional evil-doer can be important to accurately portraying him, but when one discusses the effects of those intentions it is of less importance.
Dec 26, 2007 - 1:41 pm Headspace and Timing v2.0:Will Smith, Hitler, and the
Will Smith, Hitler, and the perils of benevolence
Dec 26, 2007 - 3:14 pm Vlad W.:What I find most disturbing in this hoopla is not what Will Smith said and what he possibly meant by it, but the inordinate amount of attention we pay in this country to the utterences of celebrities. He is an actor. An entertainer for heaven’s sake! Yet we treat him and people like him as if they were much more than that. The mere fact that someone has been seen in many movies and has made tons of money pretending to be other people does not make him or her a wiser person than an average Joe or Jane. It is a sad commentary on our culture that we look up to these people as if they were leaders or sages of some sort, and that their utterances are given weight they do not deserve.
Dec 26, 2007 - 3:16 pm Paul:“I think very few people believe in the melodramatic ‘evil’ character, twirling his handlebar moustache while the girl lies screaming and tied to the train tracks.”
submandave, perhaps you shouldn’t dismiss real evil quite so casually before making the otherwise sound points in your second paragraph. There are people who actually do enjoy inflicting pain and causing harm while understanding quite as well as the rest of us exactly what they are doing. However, I agree that it’s the end results rather than the motives that ultimately matter. Truly sadistic sociopaths are fortunately rare. It’s generally the utopians operating from what they imagine to be the very best of motives who end up doing the broadest and most lasting harm to society.
Dec 26, 2007 - 6:25 pm Steve Skubinna:I would dispute that Hitlet “thought he was doing good.” He realized that his ideals, programs and actions were “bad” by conventional morality, which he explicitly rejected. He believed he was above “good and evil,” that such concepts were Judeo-Christian constructs created to keep humanity docile. They didn’t ally to Supermen such as himself.
Hitler is what you get when you permit a person who has thoroughly internalized Nietzsche to have power.
Finally, anyone thinking the Nazi program was merely a misguided attempt to do well should ponder the lengths they took to conceal the nature of their Final Solution. It was going to be presented as a fait accompli. They understood that what they were doing would shock morality, therefore they attempted to institute and complete it clandestinely.
Will Smith is not the only person to make this error, which in his case I expect was due to a combination of historical ignorance and a belief that everyone (who is sane, anyway) wants to be good. His intended point was incorrect and inelegantly expressed, but I do with more people would use it as a springboard for study and discussion.
Dec 26, 2007 - 7:23 pm One Salient Oversight:I don’t see this as a right vs left issue. Lefty blogs have completely ignored this current controversy - they have not sought to either criticise Smith or even discuss the issue.
Smith’s comments were essentially mis-reported and sensationalised by a media that is more interested in advertising revenue than being professional and judicious.
Dec 27, 2007 - 12:14 am njcommuter:Will Smith’s comment could have come right out of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, which declares that the central problem of ethics is aligning the individual’s notion of what is good with what is actually and universally good. If Hitler declared that he had something “higher” than “good” what he was saying was that he had a notion of “good” closer to the real, universal good. In this, he was evil, but he was not evil because he didn’t want Good; he was evil because he reached for Good and grasped something else.
Dec 27, 2007 - 12:33 am Rich Rostrom:Mr. Skubinna: Hitler believed he was beyond conventional good and evil, but that his goals were ideals in some higher sense. Himmler once likened the operatives of the Holocaust to a surgeon, who has the strength of character to cut open a body with blood all about where ordinary people would flinch, but thereby cures a disease. Doctors, scientists, generals, clergymen, or revolutionaries who are out to Save Humanity see themselves as beyond conventional morals. They may conceal what they do, but only from the petty Now. The Future Will Honor Them.
Many of the ultra-radicals believed that they affirmed the transcendent moral worth of their ultimate ends by the immediate moral horror of their means. Such acts showed they were serious.
Mr. Kimball: speaking as a fellow conservative, I think it is wrong to identify messianic moralism exclusively with the Left. There have been those who identified Tradition as the source of All That Is Good, fanatically opposed all innovation, and destroyed by force all challenge to their social system.
Also, the levelling egalitarianism of the modern socialistoids is hostile to liberty, but so is hereditary aristocracy, historically the most common form of inegalitarianism. And race ethnarchy, which fortunately was never very common.
Dec 27, 2007 - 12:41 am TeachESL:Jim Harmon, Willis and Wacky:
That is the question to be asked: What can cause a person to change? I am not the same person I used to be, though much about me is the same. Call it ‘growing up.’ Yes, my past still influences me; but I try very hard not to let it ‘drive’ my life. Look, people get involved in cults. And they can be deprogrammed. I don’t know technically how it’s done. I once read a story about a man - a neo-Nazi - who was making life hell for a Jewish family (somewhere in the U.S.). I don’t recall any of the details; but this family didn’t let anger determine their response to him and at the end the man converted to Judaism! I, myself, wouldn’t have the patience for this; but I can understand that it can happen.
Dec 27, 2007 - 4:08 am RE:Why do people pay attention to what celebrities say? After all these are people who have ‘made’ their name reciting the scripted words of others, so who is the bigger fool? Will Smith? Or the people who give a damn about what such an empty head says?
Dec 27, 2007 - 4:25 am Briggs:To those who would suppose that, “Ought not wrongs to be righted?” is a rhetorical question, Stove also writes (from the same essay):
Dec 27, 2007 - 4:35 am Robert Craig III:Here is an example of why so many corrections are needed and why the media often gets away with disseminating wrong or misguided information. While the attack on Will Smith and his comment is excused with a logic based on “how does he know what Hitler was thinking”. U is twisted to think the authors of the attack articles are in a better position to understand what Will Smith was actually thinking. Communication is difficult enough without assuming what is written qualifies the author as an expert on the topic. Much the same way any comment by a public figure be they movie star or politician qualifies them as an expert on the topic they comment on.
Dec 27, 2007 - 8:48 am Jamelle:No one can say for sure that Hitler started out with a full deck considering many of his family members were classified as psychotic or mentally ill by the standards of the time. It is a fact he did surround himself with some ambitious men with different ideas than he had and his out-right assault on the Jewish population of the world was aggravated or magnified shortly after he sent his staffers to the middle east to secure an oil deal for his war machine army. Editorials are different from reporting facts.
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
That isn’t a statement of moral equivalence, it’s a recognition that perception alters reality. And that depending on where you stand, the same action looks vastly different.
About the “Left” condemn evil, I don’t have the time or inclination to search out a quote of some representative of “the left” condemning evil. I do know that the liberal outrage over waterboarding and other forms of torture is driven chiefly by the recognition that torture is a deeply immoral action.
Yes there are those on the left that are quick to moral relativism, but that certainly does not mean that the entire “left” refuses to condemn evil. I would appreciate if you would considering giving the benefit of the doubt to your fellow citizens.
Since, you don’t really see liberals (en mass) calling all conservatives evil because a few conservatives support torture.
Dec 27, 2007 - 7:54 pm Laika's Last Woof:There is a universally accepted principle in criminal science that criminals tend to think of themselves as good people and society as evil. Acknowledging that fact of criminal psychology reveals neither sympathy nor antipathy toward criminals.
Dec 27, 2007 - 10:29 pm Running Waters:I’m willing to accept Mr. Smith’s explanation that he was rudely misquoted. Story’s over, folks. Time to move on.
I don’t think this is an argument about whether or not some people are “born evil.” What Will Smith was saying was that Hitler, whether he was born evil or he became evil, did not, himself, believe that he was doing evil.
In his twisted mind, he believed that he was righteous. It doesn’t matter if he was born evil or he developed it through his environment, the point was that he believed he was doing “good.” Obviously 99.999% of the world believes that Hitler was not doing good, but when it is not so clear-cut, as perhaps with George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton, for example, this debate goes down a slippery slope.
Many people seem to be unable to dissagree with a person’s positions while at the same time acknowledging that their intentions are positive. Using Bush as an example, many people seem to feel that, in order to fully justify and solidify their opposition to his policies they must also see him as a monster. Few people seem to be able to dissagree with him while at the same time giving him credit for his positive intentions. The same could be said for Bill Clinton and those who disliked him.
Dec 27, 2007 - 11:31 pm Chester White:Perhaps Mr. Smith has now learned a lesson.
Don’t talk to idiot reporters.
Dec 27, 2007 - 11:48 pm Ryan:I do know that the liberal outrage over waterboarding and other forms of torture is driven chiefly by the recognition that torture is a deeply immoral action.
Worth noting that waterboarding isn’t torture, of course.
Dec 28, 2007 - 2:49 pm Bob:Hilarious! Abe Foxman and his AIPAC hitmen make Will Smith grovel! The only way to teach him a lesson before they forgive him thus consolidating their power.
Dec 28, 2007 - 3:06 pm Satyr:What is your DEAL regarding “political correctness,” a right-wing shorthand for left-wing “corrections” of old social prejudices? While I certainly see overreactions coming through things like “civility codes” and hate-crime legislation, I cannot see Stalin-like purges of individuality coming through over-enthusiastic liberalism. The stormtroopers I see waging a “campaign to legislate virtue, to curtail eccentricity, to smother individuality, to barter truth for the current moral or political enthusiasm” come from the political RIGHT, not the social activist left.
Hmmmm…. which activity poses a greater and more violent threat to social and individual liberty: an actor musing about moral relativism, or a president who rewrites or ignores whole sections of the Constitution so that critics of his administration can be branded “traitors” and then assaulted, interrogated or imprisoned without trial? Dude, you’re being played! Quit parroting the right-wing lies and WAKE THE HELL UP!
Dec 31, 2007 - 1:44 pm