Recognizing Man’s Innate Capacity for Evil

Pajamas Media ^ | August 17, 2008 | Michael Ledeen

[AJKauf]

To deny it is to render ourselves incapable of defending freedom...........

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The American Founders knew it: recognizing man’s innate capacity for evil, they designed a system of checks and balances to thwart the accumulation of power by any group, lest the entire enterprise fall into wicked hands. They knew the battle for liberty would never end, Benjamin Franklin famously warned we would have to fight to keep our republic.

All of this wisdom has been dangerously undermined by the foolish notion that man is basically good, that all men are basically the same, and that all we need do is to permit history to take its preordained course. Are these not the tenets of contemporary education? Are our children not forbidden to criticize “others,” whether of different pigmentation or religion? Has debate on our university campuses not turned into the moral equivalent of the Inquisition? ......

[Always Right]

Well watching the Debate last night, Obama considers families evil.

[keithtoo]

It is not proper to question the wisdom of ‘The One’.

[SkyDancer]

“man’s innate capacity for evil”

But then, there’s man’s innate capacity for good as well. We have free will to do either ... look at all the money good people have given to disaster victims .... all it takes for evil to win is for good people to do nothing .....

[ModelBreaker]

I’m always amazed watching people rediscover original sin. A bunch of stone age Jews several thousand years ago figured out how mankind works and wrote it down. Regarding human nature, they had things figure out a lot better than modern man.

Not much has changed. As Elvis Costello wrote: “There’s no such thing as an original sin.”

[RC2]

If we think that man is not evil, the question needs answering........”Why has there only been approximately seven years, since recorded history, that there has not been a major conflict in the world?” When we look at the races we see that Koreans don’t like Japanese, blacks don’t like whites, Chinese don’t like Japanese, and so on and so on and so on. Do we actually think that we will change things?

[Matchett-PI]

“All of this wisdom has been dangerously undermined by the foolish notion that man is basically good,..” ~ Ledeen

“Whenever I meet someone who claims to find faith in God impossible, but who persists in believing in the essential goodness of humanity, I know that I have met a person for whom evidence is irrelevant.” ~ Dennis Prager ( Ultimate Issues , July- September, 1989)

Emory Report 11/29/99 Vol.52. No. 13 http://www.freerepublic.com/~matchettpi/ Excerpt:

“...Marci Hamilton ... [is] a nationally recognized expert on constitutional and copyright law. ....

Her forthcoming book, Copyright and the Constitution, examines the historical and philosophical underpinnings of copyright law and asserts that the American “copyright regime” is grounded in Calvinism, resulting in a philosophy that favors the product over the producer.

Calvinism? Hamilton’s interest in the intersection of Calvinist theology and political philosophy emerged early in her career when she began reading the work of leading constitutional law scholars. She was puzzled by their “theme of a system of self-rule.” “They talked about it as if it were in existence,” she said. “My gut reaction was that direct democracy and self-rule are a myth that doesn’t really exist.”

What Hamilton found was that a “deep and abiding distrust of human motives that permeates Calvinist theology also permeates the Constitution.” Her investigation of that issue has led to another forthcoming book, tentatively titled The Reformed Constitution: What the Framers Meant by Representation.

That our country’s form of government is a republic instead of a pure democracy is no accident, according to Hamilton. The constitutional framers “expressly rejected direct democracy. Instead, the Constitution constructs a representative system of government that places all ruling power in the hands of elected officials.”

And the people? Their power is limited to the voting booth and communication with their elected representatives, she said.

“The Constitution is not built on faith in the people, but rather on distrust of all social entities, including the people.” ...

..Two of the most important framers, James Wilson and James Madison, were steeped in Presbyterian precepts.

It is Calvinism, Hamilton argued, that “more than any other Protestant theology, brings together the seeming paradox that man’s will is corrupt by nature but also capable of doing good.”

In other words, Calvinism holds that “we can hope for the best but expect the worst from each other and from the social institutions humans devise.”

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Years ago I talked with several conservative historians about the views of the founding fathers. Their consensus was that they neither believed that men were good or bad, but that men were inherently weak.

Were men inherently good, they would do the right thing and all would be well. And were men bad, then nothing written could mitigate that fact. The constitution would just be a scrap of paper.

But if man was weak, there were some possibilities.

To start with, the avoidance of the concentration of power, either in one man, or a single body of men. They thought long and hard before even creating the office of the presidency, for fear he might become like a king or prince.

The second idea, is that which is essential to true conservatism: it is better to make no new law than to make bad law. That new law must struggle to succeed, facing a gauntlet of opposing interests and compromises. And that it should be far easier to stop for than for it to become the law of the land.

The third idea is that this should be the law of man, not heaven. Being made by man it is imperfect and can be changed without offending heaven. None can claim that the law is inviolate and must be protected. Importantly, this in no way despises God, but says that He is better than the law we grubby little mortals make for ourselves.

In turn, they also point out the natural rights of man, which accepts the idea that there is a law more important than man’s law. And that law cannot be changed or ignored, pointedly because it was not written by man in the first place.

And this truly recognizes that man is weak. Were he good, natural law would never be challenged. Were he evil, he would ignore the very idea of natural law and do as he chose. But since he is weak, it serves to remind him that these rights, especially, cannot be refused or taken away.