Dana has a post up at Common Sense Political Thought titled Democrats Are Not Evil. This may or may not have stemmed from a conversation we had in which I had expressed concern that McCain has dropped in the polls. It isn't that I wasn't expecting this; any reasonable person would have predicted it, since the race has been tight all summer. The unreasonable part of me had hoped McCain would blast Obama out of the water by October so we could stop the sort of idiocy and smearing we've watched the Democrats practice for a while now.
In any event, Dana wrote:
One of the things that has really been bothering me in this campaign is that people, from both sides of the aisle — though I do think that our friends on the left are the greater sinners in this — have been writing about the candidates as though they aren’t just wrong in their opinions, but mentally or morally defective. Yeah, I think that Barack Obama’s policies are the wrong ones for us, and yes, I worry about the influences that some of his past associates, such as the Rev Dr Jeremiah Wright and Saul Alinsky, have had on him. And I don’t think that he has been honest about some of his policies: I’ve said, flat out, that I think he is lying about what he intends to do concerning raising taxes.
But wrong does not mean evil, and wrong does not mean stupid. Senators Obama and Biden are wrong on a lot of things, but they are both highly educated, intelligent men. I assume that they both have America’s best interests at heart; I just differ with them on the best way to get there.
I don't believe Barack Obama is stupid by any means. I do,however, think he is duplicitous and untrustworthy, engaging in tactics he was supposedly going to eschew. But such is the nature of hardball politics, I suppose.
But Dana's post made me think for a minute: Are Democrats evil? I know many Democrats, both personally and professionally and I would definitely say they aren't evil. And I can usually understand why they come to the conclusions they come to, even if I disagree with them. I think I can safely say that no one, Right or Left, has malicious intent for the country. No one is deliberately trying to take us down.
But then, I have to ask, what is evil? Is abortion evil? I believe it is, unless it is a life-threatening situation. Are people who support abortion evil? That's a stickier subject.
Unlike so many people I read on the Left, I'm just not willing to ascribe evil intentions to my political adversaries. I won't say the world would be a better place without someone, or wish horrible, painful things to happen to them. That sort of hyperbole seems to be unproductive.
When I first started blogging two years ago, I was rather shocked by some of the nasty, hateful and unhinged talk I uncovered, particularly from the Left. Maybe I just don't spend enough time on extreme rightwing sites (I do spend a disproportionate amount of time on leftwing sites), but I cannot imagine blurting out some of the terrible things I've read from leftwingers.
But to answer my own question, do I think Democrats are evil? No, I don't. Unfortunately, with only a few exceptions, I haven't met on the Internet the types of liberals who make me at least open to their ideas.
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