Roger Simon, the chief political columnist for POLITICO wonders why body counts influence our willingess to consider murderers evil rather than insane :
Evil has been medicalized into insanity. But only up to a certain point. There seems to be a correlation between the number of people you kill and whether you are called insane or evil.
Loughner allegedly kills six and is insane.
Adolf Hitler kills more than 6 million, and he is evil. The same is true for Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. We don’t say they needed the intervention of community health clinics; we say they were the ultimate examples of evil on Earth because they murdered tens of millions of people.
Is the difference just numbers, however? You kill a certain number of people and you are nuts, but you cross the line and kill more and you are evil? Is that how it really works?
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
How the State Failed Noelia Castillo
On March 26, Noelia Castillo, a twenty-five-year-old Spanish woman, was killed by her doctors at her own…
The Mind’s Profane and Sacred Loves
The teachers you have make all the difference in your life. That they happened to come into…
History’s Pro Tips on Iran
Nothing in human experience compares to the wars of the last 120 years. Their scope has grown…
