The Evil That Men Do

I had a visit the other evening with an intelligent, educated, articulate woman who happens to be a corporate attorney in a northern city. She simply couldn't understand how any of us could possibly support capital punishment and thought the whole idea of carrying a handgun for self-defense was just silly and reactionary. It would have been very easy to simply dismiss this lady as a nutcase who had been drinking too much of the Kool Aid, but the fact is she had reached middle age without ever having looked evil in the face.

Now, fortunately, there are those who can be told that evil exists in the world and they had better get prepared to deal with it. They see the evidence of evil on the news every night and realize something terrible could indeed happen to them. These are the good folks who get training, make defensive plans and begin to take responsibility for their own safety.

Unfortunately, there are others in our society who simply won't believe in evil until they actually look it in the face, up close and personal. You'd think intelligent, educated people would know better, but a lot of them don't.  And so they don't believe a thing until they actually "see the elephant," as the old frontiersmen used to say. The ones who survive generally make devoted converts, though.