Replies

"...a person would come to me and say, "Well, you've got to acknowledge that we've got to get rid of Bill Clinton, that's the worse evil possible," and I tried to explain to them, no, the evil that you know, the evil that you recognize, the evil that inspires you to fight against it, that's not the worse evil you can face.

Let's analyze, shall we?

Every use of the word evil in THIS section except the first refers to a FORM OF EVIL...that is, evil that is visible. The first useage of the word, quoted from another speaker, posits that Bill Clinton is a form of that evil. Keyes does not even affirm that this postulation is correct, he merely says that SOME evil is obvious.

The worst evil you can face is the insidious evil that creeps behind your lines, that demoralizes your leadership, that confuses your commitment and your understanding and that, in the end, defeats you, not because your enemy overwhelms you but because in your confusion, your doubt, and your lack of commitment to those things, you overwhelm yourself.

Now, as a continuation on the nature of evil, he mentions a second FORM OF EVIL. This evil, as opposed to the obvious form, is the "sneaky" form. He does not describe IT in any personified form, but it is rather obviously described as a set of ideas or influances - NOT as a person.

And I'm watching it happen right now. I watched the run-up to the stem cell research decision on the part of President Bush. Now, part of me was impatient with the whole process that we were going through because I watched the media hyping the "judicious" and "agonizing" decision that he was making, and I've got to tell you, there are times when somebody comes to me and says, "Oh, I'm agonizing over this decision," and the very fact that their agonizing tells me they don't understand the decision. "

Clearly, the reference to insidious evil is NOT to the PERSON (never once is it said "this evil man" or any words remotely to that effect). Repeatedly he refer's not to Bush, but to the DECISION.

THAT is what he called EVIL, and it is a valid opinion, though certanly not the only valid one.

If you don't mind, we've all been "treated" to multiple explanations of "what he said" that night.

The Freepers who were they took it just the way we did, that he called Bush evil.

I'll stick with them.

And just as an aside, has it every occured to you all that people spend an awful lot of time "telling people just what Keyes was saying?"

Help me out here.

What is wrong with a moral king whose subjects have to spend most of their time translating what he really meant.

And let us not forget that the same subjects believe that no one holds a candle to his articulate delivery. Something doesn't add up.