Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Whole Lotta Evil I received my copy of Peter Singer's latest book, The President of Good and Evil: the Ethics of George W. Bush, in the mail today. He cites the following statistics on Bush's use of the word "evil" in the book's introduction: Bush's tendency to see the world in terms of good and evil is especially striking. He has spoken about evil in 319 separate speeches, or about 30 percent of all the speeches he gave between the time he took office and June 16, 2003. In these speeches he uses the word "evil" as a noun far more often than he uses it as an adjective -- 914 noun uses as against 182 adjectival uses. Only twenty-four times, in all these occasions on which Bush talks of evil, does he use it as an adjective to describe what people do -- that is, to judge acts or deeds. This suggests that Bush is not thinking about evil deeds, or even evil people, nearly as often as he is thinking about evil as a thing, or a force, something that has a real existence apart from the cruel, callous, brutal, and selfish acts of which human beings are capable. His readiness to talk about evil in this manner raises the question of what meaning evil can have in the secular modern world. Welcome to America, Professor Singer. 9:38:58 PM    comment [] Feel the Passion Mel Gibson's film has spawned a media outreach campaign. To obtain information on salvation, click on the "View Commercials" window, and be sure to check out the last one, entitled "Relentless." (You have to scroll down.) Postscript: "Verdict" is also pretty good. 1:21:15 AM    comment []

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