Bruce Charlton agrees with me.
In this post from a few weeks ago I show how evil being the privation of the good, moderates are more evil than our political opponents.
My good friend Miles told me this years ago. I wasn’t sure. Then I came to believe it. Now I can prove it.
Meanwhile, Bruce Charlton posted this today:
During recent decades, as a consequence both of materialistic assumptions permeating more and more of life, and in response to the ratcheting pressures of the Left and fear of ‘fundamentalist’ religiosity; resistance to totalitarian convergence has often asserted the importance of Neutrality.
Neutrality would entail the separation and autonomy of functional social systems from the prevalent politicization. For examples, that science, literature, law, education, the media should Not be explicitly Leftist – and should Not be subject to any other ideology or faith. This neutrality was approximated during the middle of the twentieth century in The West.
Another aspect of this Neutrality aspiration is Free Speech – which seems to have begun as as a demand from functional specialists (including the arts and sciences, especially) to be independent of church constraints in their professional (as well as personal) lives, but later was expanded to meet the escalating attacks from the Left.
The demand for Neutral areas and subjects therefore has its roots in an earlier phase of the materialist, leftist, ideological takeover; which is probably why it has been so utterly ineffective at resisting the movement further left – towards a single global, totalitarian ideology.
More than this, Neutrality is itself an undesirable ideal for a Christian; since it is rooted in the idea that only some aspects of life are Christian – while others are outside of Christianity; only some aspects of life are spiritually important – while other aspects are unspiritual.
Any plausibility in such assertions derives from the false idea that ‘facts’ are independent of metaphysical assumptions. The idea that there can and should be agreed facts – and agreed concepts by-which facts are interpreted – that are outside of our fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions regarding the nature of reality.
But Neutrality is untrue philosophically – since it is metaphysical assumptions that enable us to know what is a fact and what counts as an explanation.
And
Secondly; Neutrality is also untrue ’empirically’ in that if you have (as I have, many times!) tried to argue with an ideological Leftist from a position of Neutrality; you will rapidly discover that there is no agreement as to what are the relevant facts and appropriate concepts.
Neutrality is evil. It is not a choosing. It has no basis in fact, ideology, or belief. Having no basis in fact, ideology, or belief, other than wishful thinking, it has no possibility in being tied to the good. Evil being the privation of the good, neutrality, and therefore the moderate, is evil.