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To many people, the world seems to make less and less sense with each passing day. Values we once cherished and that bound civil society together face daily bombardment. Offensive things are routinely said and done today in ways intended to inflame and divide. Freedoms we took for granted—freedoms of thought, speech, press, religion—are under relentless assault as intrusive government and cancel culture gain ground.“Orwellian” is no longer just an adjective derived from a work of fiction more than seven decades ago; it describes some new development in our lives every day. Words and thoughts, once neutral or perhaps disagreeable but not actionable, are treated now as if they are crimes. History itself is being rewritten to serve political agendas. Petty tyrannies are morphing into bigger tyrannies as governments play an ever more intrusive role in the lives of their citizens. There’s an awful lot of bad behavior going on—and perpetrators getting away with it, too. From lying to looting, it feels like an epidemic. ...We are witnessing an alarming collapse of social cohesion that is propelled, as if it were consciously planned, by something bigger and more menacing than simply falling standards of character. I call it “evil,” and I sense that it’s on the loose and on the rise. ...An evil person believes his ends justify any means. He divides the world between offenders and the offended and sells himself as a savior. He steals, injures, maligns, deceives, deconstructs, or even kills whatever stands in his way. He accuses the innocent of the very crimes he commits. He distorts language itself in order to confuse rather than enlighten.The mortal enemy of evil is truth. It is profoundly reactionary and pessimistic. It is at war with human nature because it deals with people not as the unique and precious individuals they are (endowed with rights) but as pawns, dupes and tools. Evil is invariably a foe of individual freedom and an ally of collectivist socialism and its authoritarian impulses. ...
