'Know Ye Not Me?' The Face of Evil Is Seen, Defeated

The air fills with prayer this weekend as worshipers, or at least church-goers, attend the rites of Holy Week and Passover. These rituals call forth traditions and ideas born centuries ago, not least the idea that mankind is redeemable. It seems, however, that one other idea that for centuries had been a constant through these few days has declined and is out of favor. That is the idea of evil. There is something about evil today -- the word, its implications -- that discomfits up-to-date sensibilities. I think modern discomfort with evil explains, in part, the opposition to making war against Saddam Hussein.

Milton had the queer notion that reality was grounded on something more fundamental. Secretly, he feared that fundament was evil itself, and you can regard Paradise Lost as his attempt to convince himself that the opposite was true. But Milton was on the wrong track. His fiends are magnificent and towering in their malevolence. Hannah Arendt knew better: it is "stubble"; vulgar, stupid and empty. American soldiers flung open Saddam's Palaces hoping to find a cave of djinns, only to find it decorated by cheap fantasy paintings with buxom blonde and dragon motifs: like discovering the makeup kit and rouge in Hermann Goering's bag. And we are confronted with the grim possibility that:

... the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain

Yet even as we find that the United Nations building consists entirely of empty rooms, we are aware that we are not quite alone. That something waked us to this state; that Herman Goering's bag is in our possession; that against all odds, someone is laughing at Saddam's sick paintings. And that someone is us.

In a field, a match is put to Milton's stubble. Evil may exist. Evil may sometimes triumph. But not today, boys. Not today.

I have no recollection of another recent public figure placing this concept so insistently at the center of his thought, not even the Pope.

President Reagan's greatest asset was his ability to differentiate good from evil. This President learned at his knee.

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