THE “AXIS OF EVIL” VS. THE ACCESS OF EVIL
By Stephen Allen
The English language is a funny
thing, isn’t it? Those two expressions: “The Axis of Evil” and “The Access
of Evil.” Both pronounced the same, and yet they carry vastly different
meanings. By referring to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as “The Axis of Evil,”
George W. Bush basically invited them to come along and prove it. “Bring It
On,” as it were—and well they might.
The “Access of Evil” is a much more
profound subject. If you go through history looking for examples of what you
might call pure evil, you do not have to look very far. The
Holocaust, of course. Pol Pot, of course. The various genocides in Africa,
of course.
But then you come to equally
well-known cases with smaller numbers: the slaughter of innocent children in
an Amish one-room school in Pennsylvania; the belt-notching slaughters of
young women by people such as Ted Bundy; the sadistic murder of JonBenet
Ramsey.
What drives people to commit crimes
of such obvious pure evil? A Portland, Oregon, detective who solved the case
of a pretty little nine-year-old girl who had been raped, murdered, and then
cut into pieces, said that the murderer in offering him an explanation for
the crime said: “She was asking for it.”
Well of course that is true—in the
logic of the perpetrator. If you happen to be in the wrong place at the
wrong time and in the pathway of someone like Ted Bundy, then of course you
are “asking for it,” in the great cosmic sense that all of us are “asking
for it” once we are born. We enter this world crying, and most of us leave
it crying—probably for good reason in both cases.
To commit evil or to commit good is
almost always a choice. Rarely are you ever forced to do it, despite
some of the defenses put forth by Nazi officers at the Nuremberg Trials.
What amazed and depressed the writer Hannah Arendt at the trial of Adolf
Eichmann was “the banality of evil,” the pure everyday normality of
what happened.
What compels one then to commit evil
rather than good? Is it the way you were raised, the life experiences that
brought you to that point? Or is it something that you were born with? With
a frequent lack of other evidence, a good argument can be made for the
latter.
The author of this essay is one of
those people who does not believe in a heaven or a hell, who does not
believe in a god nor even in the absence of a god. And yet, when I
view such things as deliberate and sadistic and murderous
cruelty—particularly done to a child—how can I not believe in the existence
of pure evil for its own sake?
So if we must then, as the result of
evidence, believe in the existence of pure evil, must we not also
believe in the existence of pure good? Perhaps. Who knows how the
world works—or why? If we believe in a Satan as the author of pure
evil—because there can be no other explanation—must we not then believe in
God as the author of pure good?
I don’t know. I’m not that smart and
have given up trying to answer that question.
But I remember the line from the
movie Oh God!, where comedian George Burns was cast in the role of
God.
“How
can you let such things happen?” asked a mystified human on viewing the
cruelties of the world.
“I
didn’t,” God said. “You did.”
Stephen Allen is a retired journalist
who lives in Belfast, Maine, with his wife/editor Neva and their two cats,
Nikki and Misty.
