Feelings and Evil

Part 6: Feelings

With the decline of the authority of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many people stopped looking to external sources of moral standards in order to decide what is right and wrong. For many millions in the twentieth century, those guidelines were provided by Marxism, Communism, Fascism or Nazism. For many millions today, those guidelines are … feelings. The "self-esteem movement" -- now conceded to have been a great producer of mediocrity and narcissism -- was entirely a liberal invention based on feelings for kids. The liberal preoccupation with whether America is loved or hated is also entirely feelings-based. The Left wants to be loved; the conservative wants to do what is right and deems world opinion fickle at best and immoral at worst.

Part 7: Do You Hate Evil?

Much of humanity doesn't. But if you embrace Judeo-Christian values, you must. A core value of the Bible is hatred of evil. "Those who love God -- you must hate evil," the Psalms tell us. In much of the Arab and Muslim world, "face," "shame" and "honor" define moral norms, not standards of good and evil. In the contemporary Western world, most people who identify with the Left hate war, corporations, pollution, Christian fundamentalists, economic inequality, tobacco and conservatives. But they rarely hate the greatest evils of their day, if by evil we are talking about the deliberate infliction of cruelty -- mass murder, rape, torture, genocide and totalitarianism.