David Warren:
'Let me fix upon this word "perverted," for both Anders Breivik and Osama bin Laden have shared in an advanced conception of "justice." Each went to extraordinary lengths to justify what he was doing.
'Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the rest, were never so naked as to appear in public without a justification. It is not given to human beings to be free of moral conscience - for once again, there is a natural moral order. A person can stop justifying his own behaviour for no longer than he can hold his breath, and the coldest-blooded killer ever born is entirely human in that respect.
'This distinction is crucially important. The moral sense - the sense of right and wrong - is not something a person has or doesn't have. He always has it. The question is whether it has been twisted. It becomes twisted, perverted, when we begin to think the end will justify the means; that we ourselves have the gift to discern "the greatest good for the greatest number."'
Great piece. If you reject the idea of evil, all you have left is therapy unanchored to any type of law.
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