"But if you'd like to discuss it some more, I'm game."
Great. We can agree that "treachery" and "evil" are somewhat synonymous except that "evil" implies more than drawing a line in the sand and taking sides. Both "treachery" and "evil" imply that the perp is outside of conventional human ethics in there approach. Treachery could be excused as making bad choices, bad influences from advisors, greed and corruption. Evil says much the same thing but also assumes the heart and soul of the perp has become wicked. If that is what Bush believes, I don't know why he shouldn't say so.
I get confused when somebody says something like "it was an evil act." I don't know what that means, since the statement seems to separate the act from the heart and soul of the perpetrator. Unless someone can be temporarily evil just while tossing bombs.
When or if Bush is associating evil with a particular demographic based on ethnicity, race, creed, sex, national origins, or such, I think we need to take a closer look. If he says that terrorism is evil and anyone who has aligned them selves to give support to terrorism is evil, I have an inkling that he may be right.
"We particularly don't want to introduce a religious spin to this war while Bush is working so hard to say it's not about religion. There's a mixed message there. The moral/religious framework subsumes not only the concept of evil but the tactic of crusades. His point is that we should keep all that at arm's length and stay within the self-interest framework."
It seems since he has defined his use of the word "evil" exclusively of the things that could otherwise be considered mixed, he's in the clear. |
