Philip Slater: Will Smith and the Good Guys/Bad Guys Myth

Many Americans cling to a belief in comic book villains -- 'Bad Guys' who actually identify with 'Evil'. A few nuts may like to dramatize themselves this way, but the evil they actually manage to accomplish is peanuts compared to what people who think of themselves as 'Good Guys' achieve. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the slaughters of Protestants by Catholics and vice versa, of Sunnis by Shiites and vice versa, the death squads employed by Latin American dictators -- all these atrocities were committed by people who thought they were ridding the world of evil. The current Pope thinks atheism is the main source of evil in the world, which is laughable. When Godfroi de Bouillon, the 'heroic' crusader, slaughtered the entire Muslim and Jewish population of Jerusalem, including children and mothers with infants, herding Jews into the synagogue and burning them alive, he called it a "solemn sacrifice to Jesus". Of course religion isn't the only source of atrocity -- Stalin and ... (link)