Political Evil

September 5, 2011
Despite its fire-and-brimstone title, the latest from Wolfe (The Future of Liberalism) offers a restrained and balanced inquiry into the violent world confronting America today, covering a wide variety of leaders and philosophers, including St. Augustine, Hannah Arendt, Adolf Hitler, and Osama bin Laden. Wolfe spends little time mulling the subjectivity of "evil" as a concept. Rather, by "evil," he means the threats that loom for the liberal democratic societies of Europe and America during the coming decades. His primary concern is to construct a typology of political evil, encompassing genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, and such "counterevil" as the American use of torture to combat its enemies. Too often, argues Wolfe, citizens allow their leaders to use acts of evil as an excuse for overly aggressive retaliations. Only by accurately classifying each threat can the West successfully respond to it. However, it's not clear how mere identification can solve real-world problems, such as poverty and powerlessness, which underlie many of the evil acts he discusses. Without addressing these root causes, any schema such as Wolfe's will be an exercise in scholasticism, akin to counting how many devils can dance on the head of a pin.

August 1, 2011

Noted political scientist Wolfe (The Future of Liberalism, 2009, etc.) brings the theological problem of evil to bear on politics and political wrongdoers from Hitler to Dick Cheney.

"Political evil is all around us," writes the author, and the headlines would certainly seem to bear him out. That evil comes in four flavors: terrorism, ethnic cleansing, genocide and what Wolfe calls counterevil, which he defines as "the determination to inflict uncalled-for suffering on those presumed or known to have inflicted the same upon you." This is likely to be the most controversial plank in his platform, but nonetheless Wolfe considers George W. Bush's response to Saddam Hussein to be a hallmark example. Political evil has a cause, he writes, and that cause would seem almost always to be the accumulation and retention of power. This is distinct from the "apolitical evil" that dominates the headlines: the Columbines and murderous mothers and Beltway snipers that haunt our dreams. Such evil is often characterized by a sort of glee in a madman's gleaming eye. In the instance of political evil, it is possible to see that glint—as Wolfe writes, "However much they differ from each other, Eric Harris, Adolf Hitler, and Osama bin Laden all took unseemly pleasure in the harm they caused others"—but the process is often anonymous and bureaucratic. Cheney, apologist for and practitioner of evil, comes in for a particular drubbing on that score; Wolfe asserts that his devotion to waterboarding and invasion was meant to scare "civil libertarians and Democrats" as much as the nation's external enemies. Replacing Cheney's theory of government as nemesis, Wolfe writes, is necessary "if the United States is to come to terms with its experience of counterevil."

Abstract and sometimes arid, but always with an eye to what's happening on the ground.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 1, 2011
Genocide, torture, and other forms of atrocity provoke examination of the evil in human hearts, metaphysical and philosophical explorations that often overlook political motivations in search of something higher and greater, though darker, by way of explanation. We run the risk that empathy for its victims clouds discernment of the politics behind evils and that different approaches to problems are needed to avoid repeating evils, political science scholar Wolfe, author of The Future of Liberalism (2009), says. We should not lose our heads just because people lose their lives, he argues. By failing to analyze evil out of concern that analysis may appear to justify it, we miss the opportunity to stop the politics behind the evil. Wolfe analyzes atrocities around the globe, from Darfur to the Balkans, and concludes that in order to combat evil, we need to pay attention to the local causes and concerns that spark it. Despite the persistence of evil, Wolfe is hopeful that we can stop evil acts, and despite his clear appeal to reason, his arguments are quite passionate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2011

Noted political scientist Wolfe (The Future of Liberalism, 2009, etc.) brings the theological problem of evil to bear on politics and political wrongdoers from Hitler to Dick Cheney.

"Political evil is all around us," writes the author, and the headlines would certainly seem to bear him out. That evil comes in four flavors: terrorism, ethnic cleansing, genocide and what Wolfe calls counterevil, which he defines as "the determination to inflict uncalled-for suffering on those presumed or known to have inflicted the same upon you." This is likely to be the most controversial plank in his platform, but nonetheless Wolfe considers George W. Bush's response to Saddam Hussein to be a hallmark example. Political evil has a cause, he writes, and that cause would seem almost always to be the accumulation and retention of power. This is distinct from the "apolitical evil" that dominates the headlines: the Columbines and murderous mothers and Beltway snipers that haunt our dreams. Such evil is often characterized by a sort of glee in a madman's gleaming eye. In the instance of political evil, it is possible to see that glint--as Wolfe writes, "However much they differ from each other, Eric Harris, Adolf Hitler, and Osama bin Laden all took unseemly pleasure in the harm they caused others"--but the process is often anonymous and bureaucratic. Cheney, apologist for and practitioner of evil, comes in for a particular drubbing on that score; Wolfe asserts that his devotion to waterboarding and invasion was meant to scare "civil libertarians and Democrats" as much as the nation's external enemies. Replacing Cheney's theory of government as nemesis, Wolfe writes, is necessary "if the United States is to come to terms with its experience of counterevil."

Abstract and sometimes arid, but always with an eye to what's happening on the ground.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)