"James A. Donald" wrote:
evil, of course, is a question of perspective. most of those "evil" nations/people regard the US pretty much the same way. :-)
Stalin and Hitler were especially firm believers in the principle that evil is merely a question of perspective,
and you seriously believe you can debunk a point by pointing out that there's a few assholes among its followers? oh, come on.
and thus any nation that got in the way of mass murder, notably the US, was, by their theory, especially evil. Indeed Stalin made "objectivism" a thought crime, punishable by death. By "objectivism" he meant the belief that truth was a matter of fact, rather than authority.
"evil" could, I believe, be *defined* as "the term pretty much everyone uses to describe his or her enemies". on the other hand, I don't know many people who don't consider themselves righteous, good, etc. thinking about it, objective is a word that has been abused quite a lot by virtually any faction in power during a given time. it's not been too long since the existence of god, heaven and hell was an "objective fact". stalins definition of "objectivism", as you repeat it above, is just one more of those abuses. what you say is merely that he called everyone who opposed his philosophy by that term. however, in most of the worlds we're living in today, the label of a thing is seperate from the thing itself.