The Virtue of Evil

My Dear Barack,

Wise is the leader who understands the symbiotic relationship between virtue and evil.

Evil posing as virtue creates more evil, which demands ever more “virtue” to confront the evil it has created. Virtue and evil are flip sides of the same coin because virtue can only spread itself to others who don’t share its worldview through acts of evil.

The rack and the stake spread Christianity; the cluster bomb and the drone are spreading democracy and free enterprise.

Virtue justifies its evil because it is virtue. As one writer explains it:

Those who insist that the world can be molded into their vision are the most susceptible to violence as antidote. The more uncertainty, fear and reality impinge on this utopian vision, the more strident, absolutist and aggressive are those who call for the eradication of “the enemy.”

This same writer points out that the philosopher Immanuel Kant called the use of evil to propagate virtue “unadulterated self love.” This is why we’re so good at it. For decades our pop psychologists have emphasized the importance of loving ourselves and being comfortable in our space. From this it follows that we want the whole world to be comfortable in our space as well, mainly by making their space, i.e. resources, ours.


It makes sense. By spreading Christianity and democracy to the natives we turn them into little white men, which is what God intended. After all, Cecil B DeMille taught us that all biblical characters spoke BBC English, except for Jesus who spoke sonorous baritone.

I was pleased to see you four-square behind your predecessor's Eternal War of the Empty Policy. Speading virtue always creates hefty defense contracts. It's what we call prosperity's feedback loop.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones