Comments on: Evil as the Absence of Empathy

By: Giorgio

Giorgio — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:50:55 +0000

Thank you, RP, for the link. I have posted my petition to end the rule of the World by these PSYCHOPATHS…
Furthermore, I would suggest in this petition that the UN headquarters should be moved out of New York permanently, and placed in some other Nation, eg. South Africa.

By: Richard Posner

Richard Posner — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:49:27 +0000

I can see no good coming from or to America in the foreseeable future. Put a fork in it, it’s done.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/help-stop-global-death-and-destruction

“All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.”

By: Brian Koontz

Brian Koontz — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:12:53 +0000

The Bush regime may fall (through it’s heir McCain), but it makes little difference. The Left has already lost the war against the elite for control of the American people – they will either vote for McCain or Obama. Either will result in a corporatist imperialist monstrosity. Both candidates are receiving vast corporate funding because they serve those interests.

Focusing on “taking down Bush” is sad and ineffective. Either fundamental changes to the American system (as well as others) will take place or the world is doomed.

By: Richard Posner

Richard Posner — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 05:01:23 +0000

Bob is a Troll. His kind is best ignored. He has no intention of engaging in any intelligent or rational discussion with anyone. It seems impossible to find any progressive websites that are not plagued by these willfully ignorant bottom feeders. Their only purpose in posting is to cause disruption in otherwise useful discussion and debate. By responding to his provocations you give him exactly what he wants. Disregard him completely.

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

By: JBPM

JBPM — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:09:47 +0000

Bob,

Why is it whenever an American criticizes Cheney or Bush, folks like you immediately castigate us for not criticizing a foreign leader? First of all, isn’t it possible to do both? And secondly, as an American, my first responsibility is to criticize MY OWN government, particularly because that government is ostensibly one that is “of, for, and by” me and the rest of the American people.

And now that we have Americans being killed because they are “liberal” (i.e., the Tennessee Valley UU Church shooting) can we please end the bullshit about being able to speak our minds without having anything to fear? Thanks to a decade of rhetoric painting all of us who question and criticize the government as TRAITORS and TERRORISTS, our ability to question and criticize without fear has been eroded. That was the point, though, wasn’t it?

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:53:13 +0000

AE, cute response.
Oh by the way I think your not telling the truth about Lebanon. But if you did, talking amongst friends and becoming a public critic are two different things. If you did go to Lebanon, you must be sympathetic to Hezbollah, and politely criticizing a friend, is not quite advocating their demise. My point stands it’s easy to publicly call someone like VP Cheney evil, you have nothing to fear. But fighting real evil, like Hezbollah, or Hamas that takes courage. Which is what you don’t have!

Secondly if you can’t recognize that the article is filled with drivel, then who is the ignorant one?

Bob

By: AE

AE — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:18:09 +0000

Bob, you are a moron. Touche, eh? Incidentally, I’ve been in southern Lebanon and criticized Hezbollah in very friendly and civil discourse. Try to understand the article before you display your vast ignorance.

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:01:05 +0000

What a piece! Long winded, not a single rational thought, utterly devoid of intellect, childish. Need I go on?

I could have written this piece in in a few words.

Bush, Cheney,corporations and the neocons are evil, and their followers are stupid.

There you have it, every thing else you wrote was drivel. Speaking truth to power takes courage. What you do is call people names who won’t retaliate. What you do is easy, you risk nothing. Go to Burma and openly criticize the regime (without the expectation that the US will intervene to protect you). If you don’t like Burma, pick Saudi Arabia, pick Southern Lebanon and criticize Hezbolla, the Gaza strip and Hamas, I seriously doubt you’d have the courage. You’d be risking your life, and I doubt you would be willing to do that!

Lastly your knowledge of economics and history are a joke.

By: Donald Hawkins

Donald Hawkins — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:27:49 +0000

I watched the Senate the last few day’s and childlike is a good word and not to bright is another way of looking at it. In the face of human civilization standing a very good chance 99 to 1 that we will not be here in a hundred years unless we make choices now and what I saw on the floor of the senate was not empathy or even common sense but this childlike way of thinking using words and ideas that a child would use when faced with a problem

By: Donald Hawkins

Donald Hawkins — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:18:15 +0000

Thank you Ernest great writting and let’s not give up just yet.

By: DavidG.

DavidG. — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:02:38 +0000

That greed is a moral cancer is beyond dispute. That we live in a fragmenting world that worships greed is beyond dispute. That the few control the many for their own ends is beyond dispute.

That we humans will bring about our own demise is also beyond dispute.

Hopefully it will come soon!

By: Richard W. Posner

Richard W. Posner — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:22:58 +0000

This is doubtless one of the finest essays I have read in a very long time. It does an amazing job of pulling together numerous aspects of the cycle which human history has followed since Cro-Magnon overwhelmed Neanderthal.
The author recognizes the fact that those who obsessively seek unlimited wealth and power are without empathy, they simply do not care. This is so accurate and so clearly at the root of human suffering. It is almost as if there was a recessive but persistent gene, coded for evil, which evolution has been unable to select out in spite of its obvious negative implications for the survival of the human species.
The responsibility for the catastrophic state we now face, which includes the climate induced extinction event we have triggered, is placed squarely where it belongs, in the lap of “that dogmatic mix of market absolutism, libertarianism, corporatism and simple greed that falsely describes itself as “conservatism,” and which I choose to call “regressivism.” These are the carriers of the recessive gene I imagined above and the author is absolutely correct to group these various disciplines together. I have come to think of them as the “Supremacists”. Throughout history they have risen repeatedly and repeatedly been beaten down only to later rise again. Their goal is to live in a world with two races of people, the Master Race and the slaves. Their philosophy, taken to its logical extreme, is simply the last one alive is the winner.

By: Giorgio

Giorgio — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:39:50 +0000

Excellent article!
A valuable addition to other forerunners, like:

1) Beware the Psychopath, Son by Clinton Callahan
2) The trick of the Psychopath’s trade by Silvia Cattori
3) Twilight of the Psychopaths by Kevin Barrett
4) Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil by Andrew
Lobaczewski

As the article concludes:

“All these resource (i.e. psychopathic resourcefulness) might once again overwhelm the “consent of the governed,” and prolong the regressive regime for another four or even eight years. But eventually, it must fall. The longer it holds on, the greater the misery and repression that will ensue, and the more violent the eventual overthrow.

Best to end it now.

But it will take an extraordinary effort by an overwhelming number of ordinary citizens to bring it off. There are no guarantees.”

And the only Sane Person I see in the immediate horizon that could bring it off is: RON PAUL!!