Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Monsters Do Exist

I love this piece from Jonah Goldberg.  This sentence sums up the theme:

Meanness is no longer innate; it’s the unfortunate side effect of being misunderstood, the forgivable self-defense mechanism of victims.

Some people will think he's being a little paranoid; sometimes movies are just entertainment, not tools of propaganda - and I think he would wholeheartedly agree with that. But he's not out to censor anyone, he's making a point about our society's increasing tendency to excuse bad behavior. It's hard to deny the power of his argument.

Not every monster is a misunderstood victim. Some of them are just monsters. It's a valuable exercise to try to understand why people act they way they do - but evil that can be understood is no less evil.

I also agree with him that our society has incohenetly made judgmentalism the only inexcusable vice (If you consider someone to be judgmental, aren't you being judgmental?), and that is an extremely disturbing development.

*****
UPDATE: And here's a great little comment from John J. Miller:

There was a time when we knew a monster when we saw one — and understood that some nasties need to have their heads chopped off and their mouths stuffed with garlic. Nowadays, however, vampirism and its related maladies are just alternative lifestyles. Condemning them is an unforgivable rendering of judgment and a crime against the imperatives of moral relativism. A society that has trouble recognizing monsters in its art probably will have difficulty identifying terrorists at its airports.

No comments:

Post a Comment