A literary note: I first read Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal) in the original language and only later in college, in English. Such a fascinating and tortured soul! A genius at metaphor and a wonderful observer of human nature. But also a Romantic - he participated in the 1848 uprisings in Europe and smoked opium, to which many have ascribed his hallucinatory literary fantasies (including the late Jim Morrison).
Overall, my own belief is that good and evil dwell within us all not as actual angels and demons, but as elements of free will. The choices we make affect us primarily, but insofar as they affect others, we are properly bounded by the personal responsibility that conditions our will; otherwise civil society is not possible. And yes, I quite agree: Evil does exist, regardless of what you might call it. I have seen its face - in the eyes of Mohammad Atta; in the crematoria of Auschwitz, in the writings of Chairman Mao.
The struggle is eternal, and in life, one must recognize one's friends, regardless of transitory disagreements over particular issues. That is why I am here. Not because I'm always right - I am not. Not because I agree with everyone here - I do not. But because we share the fundamental values that created this nation and which are presently under assault.
...and, of course, in the policies of Barack Hussein Obama.
Ah, Baudelaire.
“There is an invincible taste for prostitution in the heart of man, from which comes his horror of solitude. He wants to be ‘two’. The man of genius wants to be ‘one’... It is this horror of solitude, the need to lose oneself in the external flesh, that man nobly calls ‘the need to love’.”
“Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage.”
“The more a man cultivates the arts, the less randy he becomes... Only the brute is good at coupling, and copulation is the lyricism of the masses. To copulate is to enter into another–and the artist never emerges from himself.”
“Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing ‘evil’–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil.”
“There is no form of rational and assured government save an aristocracy. A monarchy or a republic, based upon democracy, are equally absurd and feeble. The immense nausea of advertisements. There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.”